


A Perfect Forest Through So Many Splintered Trees

by pillarboxred



Series: A Happier You Than Yesterday [4]
Category: BBC Radio 1 RPF, One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Depression, Distorted Thinking, First Time, M/M, Meeting the Parents, Suicidal Thoughts, Terrible Pancakes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-24
Updated: 2016-03-24
Packaged: 2018-05-15 01:54:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 46,610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5766889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pillarboxred/pseuds/pillarboxred
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Maybe in the morning he’ll regret it, being a disgusting mess of a human, but he doesn’t think it’s very likely.</p><p>He hasn’t really regretted anything in months, two of them now, and he’s got the sneaking suspicion that he and his wall really are going to be forever.</p><p>He’s not entirely sure that he wants his wall to be forever.</p><p>Because the bad things, all the shitty memories and fears, are back there and they can stay shut up for eternity as far as he’s concerned, but the good things are behind it too, good things like his ability to love a song for longer than it takes to listen to it, to love a story for longer than it takes to read it, to love people, his mum and his sisters and his friends and his Nicholas. They’re all shadows, fear and love both, and they're locked away from him, and sometimes he thinks he really would take the bad back if he could keep the good too.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from "Haunted" by Poe

“You’re pissed.”

Louis giggles, clapping a hand over his mouth.

"I’ll have you know, _Nicholas_ ,” he says, going to point at him and stumbling over his own feet instead, “that I am charmingly inebriated.”

"Is that what you call it?”

Nick is smiling at him.

Louis likes that.

"No, that's what what's-his-face calls it, the one with the nose you like,” he says, shaking his head and holding his cup to his lips, frowning at it when nothing comes out. He tips it forward, looks inside and everything, and still, empty. 

Louis does not like that.

Especially when a lonely little drop of shitty craft beer comes rolling out from wherever it’d been hiding and lands right on his shoe.

That lonely little drop of shitty craft beer could have been in his mouth.

"Who's the one with the nose?” Nick asks, while Louis is frowning down at his feet.

"That one guy,” he says, flapping a hand in Nick’s general direction. "The one with the nose.”

"Lots of people have noses.”

"But you like this one,” Louis says, grinding the beer stain in with the toe of his other trainer. He gets some muck worked in too.

Nice. 

Looks sick.

Louis gets another good-sized glob and smears that in too.

Niiiiiiiiice.

He hears Nick laugh.

He likes the way Nick laughs.

"That’s never going to come out,” Nick says, catching Louis by the elbow when he stumbles over his own feet again.

"Probably not, no,” Louis says, shaking his head to get his fringe out of his eyes. It doesn't really work, though, since about half of his hair’s stuck to his forehead with sweat and rapidly drying rainwater.

"’M sticky,” he mumbles, pitching forward and wrapping his arms around Nick’s waist, burying his face in Nick’s chest. “Don’t like being sticky.”

"Might rain again soon,” Nick says, resting his chin atop Louis’s head and putting one large hand on Louis’s back, moving his thumb across his spine. "Could unstick you.”

Louis sniffs and rubs his face across Nick’s shirt. The linen is cool on his cheek, if a bit damp, but it’s nice, and Nick’s skin is warm underneath.

He likes how warm Nick is.

"You're warm,” he says, grinding his forehead into Nick’s chest. “You’re warm like yellow.”

Nick’s hand moves up to cup the back of his head, and his fingers are cool on Louis’s scalp. "So that makes you bright as yellow then.”

_And you live life with your arms reached out._

Louis laughs and hums the chorus, wrapping his arms tighter around Nick’s waist. He’s barely audible over the sound of some band playing in the background, the name of which he’s long forgotten.

And he doesn’t care.

That’s the most important thing of all.

Louis. Does. Not. Care.

He doesn’t care about anything outside of being stood here with Nick in the mud that's taken over Lemonfest (he remembers that much, that they're at Lemonfest), holding onto Nick’s waist, swaying and humming a song he loves so much that he doesn’t know what to do with himself.

"’M not pale pink,” he says, tipping his head back and looking at Nick.

He likes looking at Nick.

"You are not pale pink,” Nick says, with a smile that almost makes Louis feel fizzy inside.

"Because I’m yellow.”

"Bright as yellow.”

Louis laughs and rests his chin on Nick’s chest, still looking up.

And he's looking at Nick for a good long time when out of nowhere comes, “‘M not scared. Not anymore.”

The smile, which had faded into a soft, little thing, drops off Nick's face, but it’s okay, because Louis isn’t scared. 

Not of _anything_.

"’M not,” he says, trying to sway closer into Nick somehow. It’s impossible, really, because they're stood flush against each other, but that doesn't mean Louis can't stop trying.

Nick abruptly goes rather pale.

"What’re you looking like that for?” Louis asks, tilting his head and trying to better read the expression on Nick’s face. "Just said I’m not scared is all, so you can take me home and I won't have a panic about it.”

He won't either.

Louis doesn’t panic about much of anything these days.

And it’s fucking _wonderful_. 

His beautiful, blessed wall is still in place almost two months after it went up. Louis tests it sometimes, sees if he can slip a finger in, but it’s so solid and thick that it never crumbles.

Louis and his wall are going to be _forever_.

"Can we go to yours?” he asks, because he's sticky but he’s yellow and Nick’s so warm pressed up against him that he can feel it clear down to his mucky shoes.

Louis _wants_ , and this time there isn't anything ridiculous saying he can't.

"I’ll be very good,” he says, going up on his toes and putting his lips to Nick’s ear, feeling him shiver. Louis likes it so much that he moves even closer, close enough that his lips touch Nick’s skin, adding, "Promise I will. Won't cry or nothing.”

Nick tenses while his grip falters, and then he's stepped back just a bit saying, with that same weird, sad look on his face that Louis doesn’t understand, “Let’s maybe just get you some water, yeah?”

“Don’t want water,” Louis says, because he doesn't. He wants _Nick_. 

And he says so.

That only makes it worse somehow.

The corners of Nick’s mouth actually turn _down_ , and Louis doesn’t understand _why_.

"Why are you so sad?” he asks, reaching up a hand to cup Nick’s cheek. Nick shuts his eyes and leans into it. "I thought you'd be pleased.”

"I'm not sad, Lou,” Nick says, opening his eyes and putting his hand over Louis’s. "I’m just...I think...if you're going to ask for that then...you should ask me in the morning, okay?”

Louis suddenly doesn’t feel so warm anymore.

“Why's it got to be in the morning? Why can't it be now?”

“Because,” Nick says, stepping back and pulling at his hair, "because you're drunk, love, and you don't know what you're asking.”

Something, probably shock or anger or a mix of the two, almost curls white-hot through him.

"I _do_ ,” he says, stepping back himself and clenching his hands into fists. "I do and you don't get to say I don't. You just...you _don't_.”

"I'm not…” Nick says with a sigh, his hand falling to his side. "I'm just...you should ask me in the morning, yeah?”

“But I want to do it _now_.”

"And I _don't_ ,” Nick says, and this would be the time where if Louis still had a heart it’d drop, but since he doesn't, nothing really happens.

A breeze goes by, gentle and cool and ruffling Nick’s hair just a bit, but nothing else happens, and since his little anger/shock flash faded just as quickly as it’d come on, all Louis does is shrug and say, "Yeah all right. Buy me another one, will you?”

Nick doesn’t look any happier at that, his shoulders slumping, but he eventually goes and gets Louis more shitty craft beer.

Louis figures everything’s all sorted.

~*~

The rest of Lemonfest passes in a blur.

Louis drinks until he can’t feel his lips, and once the last note fades out into the night, he tumbles into Nick’s MG without a word of protest.

He’s asleep before Nick even gets it started.

~*~

He wakes up sometime later in a bed that isn't his. He recognises it, but it’s not his.

But he’s not so concerned with that as he is with the need to get to a toilet before he's sick all over Nick’s bed.

Shitty fucking treacherous craft beer.

His legs are tangled in the sheet and in the process of trying to extricate them he manages to fall right out of bed, landing on his hands and knees and taking the sheet with him. It covers him like a cape, and Louis tugs it tighter around his neck as he’s crawling to where he thinks the bathroom should be.

The bathroom, mercifully, _is_ where it’s supposed to be, and Louis fumbles his way in the dark to the toilet, where he throws the lid back just in time for about half of Newton Abbot's finest shitty craft beer to come roaring back up.

And oh does it come back up, every burning little drop, some of it splashing back and landing on his cheeks and in his hair. His nose starts to run, his eyes begin to water, and all he can think as he’s kneeling by the toilet, resting his head on the cool porcelain and wrapping an arm around his uselessly clenching stomach, is...nothing.

Nothing nothing nothing.

Not regret or shame or _anything_.

Just a blank, blank space, and it’s not nearly as nice as it was earlier.

He’s still kneeling there, at the toilet, trying to get his breathing to even out, when he hears the flick of a switch and suddenly the bathroom’s filled with light, almost blinding him. He shuts his eyes and swallows, letting out a deep, shuddery sort of breath and pulling his sheet cape tighter around himself.

“Sorry,” Nick says, almost in a whisper. There’s a rustling and a _clink_ , and then Nick’s hand is on his back, large and warm and solid as it always is, and he’s saying, a bit louder, “Brought you some water.”

Louis turns his head and opens his eyes.

Nick’s sat not that far off, close enough to touch if he wanted to, and his face is an odd shade of yellow in the harsh light, but his smile’s gone back to being a soft thing, like looking at Louis is something that makes him happy.

“Don’t have the ibuprofen anymore,” Nick says, starting to rub at Louis’s back, “but I can get some if you need it.”

Louis shakes his head and keeps looking at Nick.

“Okay,” Nick says, still rubbing. He moves a little closer, and he must catch a glimpse of Louis’s hair because he adds, “Sorry I wasn’t here to hold your hair.”

“S’all right,” Louis says, smiling at him, because looking at Nick makes _him_ happy, no matter how wretched he feels. Not that this is wretched, exactly, but it’s the only word that comes closest.

“Get you a flannel,” Nick says, and he’s already moving away before Louis can even work up the energy to tell him not to. But he returns soon enough, damp flannel in his hands, and it’s cool when he presses it to Louis’s burning cheek. 

Louis shuts his eyes and lets Nick clean him off.

Maybe in the morning he’ll regret it, being a disgusting mess of a human, but he doesn’t think it’s very likely.

He hasn’t really regretted anything in months, two of them now, and he’s got the sneaking suspicion that he and his wall really are going to be forever.

He’s not entirely sure that he wants his wall to be forever.

Because the bad things, all the shitty memories and fears, are back there and they can stay shut up for eternity as far as he’s concerned, but the good things are behind it too, good things like his ability to love a song for longer than it takes to listen to it, to love a story for longer than it takes to read it, to love _people_ , his mum and his sisters and his friends and his Nicholas. They’re all shadows, fear and love both, and they're locked away from him, and sometimes he thinks he really would take the bad back if he could keep the good too.

If he could actually _feel_ something, whatever it was, and have it stay.

"Run you a bath if you want,” Nick says, pressing at Louis’s forehead with the flannel. "Might feel better if you had a bath. Less like death.”

"Are you saying I look like death, Nicholas?” Louis says, and he can't help but to keep smiling at him.

He really does love Nick, as much as he’s able to anyway.

"Yeah,” Nick says, with a bit of a laugh, but his face is still kind. "Smell like it too.”

"Fuck off,” Louis says, but it’s quiet, and Nick’s face splits in a grin, and then he's leaning in closer, almost like he's going in for a kiss, only to stop at the very last second.

"Maybe drink that first,” Nick says, reaching behind himself and grabbing the glass of water he’d brought with him, positioning it right under Louis’s nose.

Louis takes it and has a swallow, only for it to come roaring right back up too.

"Okay so maybe not that,” Nick says, setting the glass down and dabbing at Louis’s lips with the flannel.

"Sorry,” Louis says, his voice scratchy and muffled, and Nick just shakes his head as he’s setting the flannel to the side.

"S’okay,” he says, reaching over and brushing a few strands of Louis’s hair out of his eyes. His fingers are cool and a bit damp, but Louis’s face is still burning, so it's almost perfect, really. "Know something that might can make it better. Works for me anyway. Start your bath and I’ll get it for you, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Louis says, on an exhale. He reaches out and grabs Nick’s hand as he’s making to stand up, holding on tight and adding, "Thank you.”

“Of course,” Nick says, pausing where he is on his knees. He looks at Louis for a long time it seems, until his face softens and then he's leaning over and brushing a kiss across Louis’s freshly-cleaned cheek before whispering "anytime” into the shell of Louis’s ear.

~*~

Louis decides on a shower instead of a bath, and by the time he's got himself clean and presentable in clothes that are entirely too big to be something he’d left behind once or a dozen times, the grey light of early morning is beginning to peek through Nick’s ridiculously large windows.

Nick himself is sprawled out on the sofa, his endless legs stretched out in front of him, with one arm across his stomach and the other propped up on the arm of the sofa. His head’s resting in his hand and his eyes are shut, and the only thing keeping Louis from thinking he’s really asleep is the fact that he hasn't completely tipped over yet.

And he's beautiful like that, all soft and sleepy with his hair gone flat and stubble beginning to show, just fucking _beautiful_ , and Louis loves him so, so much.

He just wishes he could feel it in his heart instead of in his head.

Wishes he _had_ a heart, one that’d swell up with the enormity of how he feels about his Nicholas, but he...doesn’t.

He’s got an empty space, and he can't breathe for how badly he wishes it were otherwise.

He can’t fucking _breathe_ , and he doesn’t know how long he’s been stood there, watching Nick like some kind of creep, when his lungs _finally_ stop seizing and he feels like he can move again.

He relaxes his hands from where he’d had them clenched into fists, and he takes a deep breath before very slowly taking a seat on the sofa, very carefully lifting Nick’s arm and settling it across his own shoulders before curling into Nick’s side. He wraps his arm around Nick’s waist and shuts his eyes, and if it weren't for his pounding head and dry mouth and the hole where his heart should be, he’d almost say he was perfectly content.

"Feel better?” Nick asks, gripping Louis’s shoulder with one hand and patting his arm with the other.

"Less like death, yeah.”

Nick laughs and holds Louis just a bit tighter.

"Glad for that,” he says, stroking at the hair on Louis’s arm with his thumb. He shifts so he can rest his chin atop Louis’s head, and he’s so quiet and still for so long that Louis almost thinks he's drifted off, only for him to start and pull away just a bit. "Almost forgot,” he says, shifting a little more and reaching out his arm, coming back with a bottle of Diet Coke and pressing it into Louis’s hands.

"I hate Diet Coke,” Louis says, getting a better grip on the bottle as Nick’s trying to twist the cap off with one hand.

"I know,” Nick says, and he almost sounds amused as he’s sliding the bottle cap into his pocket and then patting at Louis’s knee, leaving his hand there and swiping his thumb across. "But it works, I promise.”

"Do you?” Louis asks, taking a sip and immediately grimacing. 

Diet Coke is _foul._

Nick nods, and Louis can feel the slight scratch of his stubble as his cheek rubs against Louis’s forehead. "Had a night like you where I couldn't keep anything down either. Tried water, juice, everything. Eventually I just said ‘fuck it,’ got myself a Diet Coke, and I was fine after.”

"If you say so,” Louis says, adding after he’s taken another sip, "gonna be sick all over you if it doesn't work, mind.”

Nick laughs. "Please don't.”

"I make no promises, Nicholas,” Louis says, but he's able, to his surprise, to finish the entire bottle of the nasty stuff without gagging and without sicking it all back up over Nick. He tucks the empty bottle into the crook of Nick’s elbow, and then he wiggles his arm underneath Nick’s, draping it across Nick’s hips and settling in to watch the sunrise.

~*~

The sky’s just gone pink and orange when he hears, in a murmur, “Did you still want to?”

Louis has to blink himself out of his daze to make sure he’d heard right.

“You asked me...earlier...at Lemonfest,” Nick says, while Louis is still sorting out what to say, “said you weren’t scared or anything, and I was wondering...if you felt the same now that you’re...you know…not fortified by liquid courage.” 

Louis can’t help but crack a smile. He buries it in Nick’s shirt.

“Don’t need liquid courage,” he says eventually. “Not anymore.”

That is one of the benefits of the wall, after all.

He isn’t afraid, not even of _that_.

Doesn’t particularly care about it either - except, it would seem, when he’s drunk - but he’s not afraid of it like he was, and it actually seems rather bizarre that he ever _was_ afraid of it to begin with.

“Oh,” Nick says, adding after he’s cleared his throat, “so when’d you want to, you reckon?”

Louis lifts the shoulder that’s not trapped under Nick in a shrug.

“Don’t know,” he says, because he might as well be truthful about that too. “Guess it’ll happen when it happens. Organic-like.”

“Isn’t anything wrong with planning it, you know.”

“Didn’t say there was,” Louis says, although, if he’s honest, he can’t really fathom the idea of sitting down and plotting out sex like it’s a match or something. Feels...technical and strangely sterile, and he’s already anaesthetised enough, he thinks. “We can if you want to.”

"Nah,” Nick says, his voice already gone back soft, “discuss it when the time comes, like we do.”

"That is us,” Louis says, and Nick laughs and holds him even tighter, almost sort of rocking him to sleep with his cheek smashed back against Louis’s forehead.

~*~

It happens, or tries to happen, about three weeks later.

Louis is sat on his bed reading _House of Leaves_ in a t-shirt he’d taken the scissors to and a pair of tiny shorts he’d nicked from Harry, and he’s _still_ melting in the summer heat despite not really wearing much at all. He’s got a fan aimed directly at his head, but all it seems to be doing is blowing hot air at him, and he’s glad summer term’s over and that he’s reading just to have something to do, since he’s pretty sure his brain’s long since turned to soup and started to leak out his ears.

Nick’s beside him, faffing about with something or other on his laptop, in a pair of pink trunks about as short as Louis’s with his shirt sleeves pushed up to his elbows and the buttons completely undone. He’s got his earbuds in, and he’s wriggling about to something or other, his hands flapping around everywhere, and Louis has just yanked the cord out of the headphone jack to tell him he might as well get up and dance to it when he realises just exactly what Nick's been listening to.

"Nicholas,” he says, tapping at a key to pause the song. 

Nick just looks at him all wide-eyed with his mouth hanging open.

Louis raises his eyebrows.

“What?” Nick asks, and there’s a nervous sort of smile spreading across his face.

“Forgetting something aren’t you?” Louis asks, with a glance toward Nick’s lap and back up.

Nick looks at his lap as well and then back at Louis.

“Forgetting...something?”

“ _Yes_ ,” Louis says, tugging at the hem on Nick’s trunks, pulling them down a bit on one side. “Something.”

“What I am forgetting?” Nick asks, looking at his crooked waistband, his cheeks starting to go just as pink as it is.

“What do you think you’re forgetting?”

“I have no idea,” Nick says, looking back at Louis again, his cheeks an even deeper shade of pink.

"Your _pants_ , Nicholas,” Louis says, with his best exasperated sort of sigh. "You said you'd show me how you danced in your pants to that song, and you're not doing it.”

"I did?” 

Louis nods.

“You did.”

"I don't remember that.”

"Should,” Louis says, tugging at Nick’s hem again and pulling his trunks down further. “Seeing as how you were there.”

"Where was I?” Nick asks, moving his laptop to the side and almost frowning at the bare skin of his hip.

"Does it matter where you were?” Louis returns, because he’ll be fucked if he can remember, what with his still shitty memory. 

"Suppose it doesn't,” Nick says, and he keeps watching as Louis keeps very slowly pulling his trunks down, exposing more and more skin. 

And it’s very strange that while it very much looks like Nick is in fact not wearing pants at all, the only sort of reaction Louis is even having is the faintest bit of heat in his right cheek, which is probably more to do with the sun shining on it than anything else.

But still, his heart isn’t pounding, his mouth isn’t dry, and his hands aren't shaking. It’s like looking at someone else's hands, really, especially since he's just gone underwater, his head nothing but an almost liquid sort of heaviness, and it makes him a bit dizzy, but…

But he’s not afraid.

"You're not wearing pants, are you?” he asks, more like whispers, and out of the corner of his eye he can see Nick shake his head.

"Why not?”

Louis shifts and slowly starts to slide his finger across Nick’s hip, and the skin is warm and goose-pimpled at the same time and his bones are sharp underneath.

"Too hot...for pants,” Nick says, and he’s just as quiet and a bit breathless and Louis is entirely too...fascinated to stop moving his not-shaking hand.

He presses the rest of his fingers into Nick’s skin and keeps going, right across to Nick’s belly button and back, dragging his fingernails through the hair on Nick’s stomach.

"Then why are you wearing long sleeves?” he asks, and he doesn’t know why he says that in a low voice too, but somehow it's important that he does.

"Looks better,” Nick says, still sort of whispering himself, and Louis can't help but crack a smile.

"Always have to be fashion forward, don't you?”

“I do, yeah,” Nick says, and it’s _really_ ragged-sounding.

And Louis _really_ likes that.

So he keeps moving his hand, over to Nick’s belly button and back again, eventually getting brave enough, if brave is even the proper word, to go lower and drag his nails across the skin and through the hair right above Nick’s very crooked waistband.

And he listens as Nick’s breathing starts to get uneven and he can feel him start to squirm, but it’s just...really fucking fascinating, and he can't help but to keep going, wherever he’s going.

He hears Nick breathe out his name, but he can’t look, not just yet, so he turns his head, letting his fringe fall into his eyes, and he doesn’t stop.

" _Lou_ ,” Nick says, eventually grabbing him by the wrist and forcing him to be still. Louis flattens his hand, one of his fingers dipping beneath Nick’s waistband, and when he finally looks up at him, Nick’s face is flushed and his eyes are wide and he’s... _gorgeous_ like that.

Just really fucking gorgeous, and Louis doesn’t even think before he's moving, straddling Nick and taking his face in his hands and kissing him like his life depends on it.

Maybe it does somehow.

Maybe if Louis kisses him enough, then he’ll _finally_ fucking feel something and have it stick.

_Please stick_ , he thinks, as Nick’s lips part and he can feel the press of his tongue against his own, as Nick’s hands come up and grab onto his elbows, locking him in place, and all Louis can do is hold on as tight as he can and _will_ his body to respond like Nick’s is, like _normal_ people do.

_Please fucking stick_ , he thinks, begs of whatever will listen, sinking his teeth into Nick’s lip, and hearing him gasp, doing it again and willing that sound to go straight to his dick like it should.

Like it _should_ , but it doesn't.

It _doesn't_ , and Louis could cry.

He could fucking _cry_ , and he’s so...angry that he slides his hands into Nick’s hair and tries pulling him closer, pulls at his hair and kisses him harder, so hard that he thinks his lips are going to bruise, and yet...nothing.

Nothing nothing nothing.

Nothing but a chill running across his skin and the emptiness that sinks like a stone inside him.

He stops kissing Nick before Nick stops kissing him, but he doesn’t move his head, just waits until Nick realises and finally moves back a bit.

“Lou?” he asks, his eyebrows furrowed and his eyes hazy and lovely and almost green in the light and against the fading pink of his cheeks. "You okay?”

_No_ , Louis thinks, forcing himself to nod. _Please don't be angry. Please, please, please don't be angry with me._

“Just...hot, I guess,” he manages to get out, and Nick’s eyes clear and he laughs and Louis can suddenly breathe again.

"You are hot,” Nick says, resting his forehead against Louis’s. It makes Louis’s eyes try to cross so he shuts them, just in time for Nick to add, “Really hot.”

Louis laughs, more a gust of air than anything, but it’s such a fucking relief that he even feels like he _can_ that he sort of sags as best he’s able to against Nick’s chest without moving his head away.

"You're the one that's stupidly hot,” he says, poking Nick in the shoulder and then poking him again so he'll keep laughing.

Louis really likes the way he looks when he laughs.

And, he reasons, if Nick’s laughing, then he’s less likely to be angry with him for not even being able to get it up.

He slides down and off Nick before it's too noticeable, his lack of response, and he can't help but notice _Nick’s_ , especially with the way his breath catches and his hips jerk as Louis is dragging his leg over. Not that Louis _meant_ to do it so slowly - teasing somebody, at least when he's sober, isn't something he's ever felt like he’d be able to do without being laughed at - but he _notices_ , and it just...fucking sucks that he...can't do anything about it.

He's just got his mouth open to apologise when Nick's chin lands on his shoulder, his arm going across Louis’s chest and his knee lightly bumping into Louis’s stomach.

"Too hot to dance in my pants, I think,” he says, his breath ghosting across the skin of Louis’s neck and making him shiver. "Maybe in October when the rain comes back, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Louis says, and of course his voice wobbles.

Of fucking course it does, and he knows Nick heard it, that wobble, because he's squeezing Louis’s shoulder and moving enough so his nose is in Louis’s hair.

"You're not actually hot, are you?”

It’s less of a question and more of a statement.

Louis shakes his head.

He's fucking _cold_.

Despite it being the middle of June, despite how he was melting not even twenty minutes ago, now he is fucking _freezing_ , and all he can do is keep shivering.

"Do you a cup,” Nick says, right into his ear and rubbing at his shoulder with his thumb. "Usually feel better after you've had one.”

“Okay,” Louis says, because it will help, if only until he's done drinking it, and Nick kisses him on the temple and pats him on the knee before getting out of bed and padding into the kitchen.

When he returns, cup of tea in hand, Louis is just climbing back into bed, having only left it to crawl into the check shirt he’d stolen off Nick ages ago. Nick hands him his cup once he's got the duvet settled over his legs, and then he joins him, picking up his laptop from where it’d been sat on the floor.

“Fancy a film?” he asks, poking it awake and clicking around until he gets to Netflix.

Louis nods. "You pick.”

"Disney? Might be pretty mindless.”

"All right,” Louis says, because he’d love nothing better than something mindless, and that’s how they end up spending the rest of the afternoon watching random Disney films, _Freaky Friday_ and _Prom_ and the like.

They’ve just finished _The Princess Diaries_ when Louis sets his cup of tea on his desk, only half-drunk and long since gone cold, and works his way under Nick’s arm.

"I’m okay,” he says, burying his face in Nick’s chest.

He’s sure they both know it's a lie.

~*~

He finds _House of Leaves_ a week or so later, shoved between the bed and the wall, and he opens it, thinking he’ll just pick up where he left off, only...he can't.

He can’t make sense of where he stopped, and when he flips back to the beginning, his will to start over simply...vanishes, so quickly that it's like it wasn't even there.

He slaps the book closed and puts it on his desk, on top of a teetering pile of things he’s going to get through someday, and then he crawls into bed, pulling the duvet up over his head and shutting his eyes.

_Sleep_.

Louis can always sleep.

~*~

"Louis.”

Someone’s poking him.

" _Louis_.”

Someone sounds an awful lot like Liam.

"Louiiiiiiiiis. Waaaaaake upppppp.”

Someone sounds an awful lot like Liam and he’s about to get punched if he keeps talking and poking at Louis through the duvet.

"Louiiiiiiiiis, it's half threeeeeeee. Wake upppppp.”

"Doesn’t your train leave soon?” he asks, flipping the duvet back, grabbing a pillow, and thwacking Liam with it.

Liam catches it and won't let go. 

“Leaves at five,” he says, smiling like the bastard that he definitely is. 

"So go _pack_ ,” Louis says, wrenching his pillow out of Liam’s hands, not that he had to put much effort into it, shoving it back into place and pulling the duvet back over his head.

"I already did,” Liam says, trying to peel the duvet back. 

Louis just grips it harder.

"Go bother Harry then,” he says, sticking his face out so Liam will hear.

"He told me to come get you. So I could see you before I left.”

Louis huffs out a laugh.

"I'm still going to be here when you get back, _Leeyum_.”

"I know, but…”

Liam trails off, and he’s quiet for so long that Louis pulls back the duvet to check if he’s still there.

He is, perched on the side of the bed, and he’s _frowning_ , which is not _ever_ allowed, never ever ever, so Louis sits up quickly and slings an arm around his neck, pulling him down with him. It’s an awkward tangle at first, Liam’s head ending up sort of in his armpit, but then they manage so it Liam’s resting on Louis’s arm and Louis has a clear view of his face.

"S’all right you know,” he says, mostly to Liam’s chin. "Gonna be fine even if you're not here to fret over me.”

"I don't fret,” Liam says, and Louis can't help but laugh.

"You do,” he says, meeting his eyes. “You and Harold are the worst for it. S’why you're Mum and Dad.”

"I’m not your dad.”

"Figure of speech, Li,” Louis says, at the same time as he’s thinking _thank fuck for that_. "Just means you're, like, always looking out for us and stuff, and it’s gonna be fine if you take a few weeks off it.”

"I knew that,” Liam says, and he still looks a bit pouty, but it’s more an angry sort of pouty as opposed to a sad sort of pouty, so Louis will let it pass. "But I...”

“You what?” Louis says, shifting so he can elbow him in the chest.

"I…” Liam says, catching his arm and looking at him for a very long time, “I just want to make sure you're gonna be okay.”

"Because all right I do fret,” he adds, before Louis can even get a word out. "You're right about that, not that you need to go laughing at me like you're doing.”

"Wasn’t laughing,” Louis says, even though he absolutely was. “And I’ll have Harold and Nicholas around to fuss over me and knowing them, they'll probably tag-team me or something and have me eating broccoli and all sorts of healthy things by the time you get back.”

"Isn't what I meant,” Liam says, and Louis is pretty sure what it was that he did mean, but he _isn’t_ talking about that, because there isn't anything to say that's gonna change it or fix it, and he isn’t sending Liam off thinking something needs fixing. Because then he'd stay and miss his mum terribly, and there is no way Louis is going to be responsible for that.

Which is why he says, very quietly, patting Liam’s shoulder as best he can, “Know what you meant. And it’s fine, promise. Wouldn’t promise if it wasn't, yeah?”

It’s okay if he lies, just this once.

"You wouldn’t, no,” Liam says, and the relief’s visible on his face. "Not to me.”

It’s _okay_.

“That’s right,” Louis says, trying to swallow, only his throat’s dry so he ends up making this weird sort of clicking noise that he tries disguising with a cough. "You'd find me out.”

"I would,” Liam says, and he looks so damn proud of himself that for an instant Louis really thinks he could tell him, say something like _you did_ , and then they’d hug probably and Liam would figure out how to fix a thing that can't be fixed and everything really would be all right.

But that's something that really only happens in books and in films, that big moment when someone spills their guts and they're fine after and forever and ever, and Louis, well, he doesn't have anything to say.

He has...nothing.

Nothing nothing nothing.

He doesn't want to talk about nothing.

Pointless, that.

So he pastes on a smile and sits back up, knocking Liam off of him and punching him in the shoulder for good measure. 

"Come along Payno,” he says, getting out of bed and flinging the duvet over Liam’s head.

"Let's go see how good a job you did packing.”

~*~

He does let Liam hug him at the train station, even holds onto him a bit too tightly.

He figures it's the least he can do.

~*~

Liam’s been gone for about a week when Nick decides it’s his turn to start up a fret.

"You can go to lunch with your friends, Nicholas.”

"I know,” Nick says, pacing the room with his hand in his hair. Louis really wishes he would be still. “But I just…”

“Just what?” Louis asks, sticking his leg out when Nick passes close by and getting him in the knee. Nick scowls at him, but he stops moving, thankfully, taking a seat on the bed and wrapping a hand around Louis’s leg.

"Just...you could go too,” he says, brushing his thumb across Louis’s knee. "You're always saying how Aimee’s your favourite, and she's always saying she likes you better than me, and she's gonna be there, so you two could...you know, talk about how blinding my shirt is or summat, like how you usually do.”

"It’s a regular white t-shirt though,” Louis says, reaching over and pulling at Nick’s sleeve. The neckline is loose enough that Louis can see more of Nick’s collarbone if he pulls hard enough, and Louis does like seeing Nick’s collarbones, so he keeps pulling. 

"Gonna be sleeveless if you keep that up,” Nick says, glancing down at his arm, but he doesn’t seem upset and there’s a hint of a smile on his face.

Louis likes that too.

“You say that like it's a bad thing,” he says, pulling and pulling until there's the sound of ripping fabric.

And Louis doesn’t stop.

But Nick laughs when his sleeve starts to come off, lifting his arm and letting Louis get the rest of it.

"Can pretend I’m LL Cool J, yeah?” he says, studying his bare arm for a minute before looking up at Louis. "Only it's my shirt and not my trousers.”

"Yeah that's you all right,” Louis says, hitting him with his own sleeve. "Can't live without your radio.”

Nick’s mouth drops open, hanging that way for a bit, and then he clamps it shut, reaching for his sleeve and plucking it out of Louis’s hands before he can even react.

"You're one to talk,” he says, pushing the sleeve into Louis’s face, batting at his nose and his cheeks, and Louis can feel it brushing across his eyelashes when he shuts his eyes.

“Got no idea what you're on about,” he says. "Hate the radio.”

"Don't ever listen to it, do you?” Nick says, and he sounds amused as he’s setting the sleeve atop Louis’s hair.

Louis shakes his head very slowly and then opens his eyes.

“Never,” he says, all seriousness, watching as Nick’s face splits in a grin, so wide and _nice_ , and Louis can't help but reach forward and poke at his bottom lip. Nick gusts out a laugh and his cheeks go a bit pink, and if it wouldn't disturb his jaunty sleeve hat, then Louis really would lean forward and kiss him.

Nick’s smile gets even wider when he tells him so.

“Suppose I might could help you with that,” he says, leaning in and pressing a kiss to Louis's mouth.

And Louis smiles into it, because it's Nick and his lips, and they feel so good, like they always do, but…

There’s always a but these days.

But it _aches_ , stinging in the centre of his chest, and he’s past the point where he expected sparks and fire and electricity _all_ the time, but he never expected it to actually start to fucking _hurt_.

It hurts so fucking much.

"Please come to lunch with me,” Nick mumbles against Louis’s lips. 

"Why do you need me to go?” he whispers back.

Nick pulls away so abruptly that Louis can almost feel a bit of air go past his cheeks.

"Because I…” Nick says, stopping and frowning at the duvet bunched around Louis’s hips and then over at the desk, piled high with books and scraps of paper and half-drunk cups of tea. His gaze drops to the floor and to the clothes Louis keeps forgetting to put in the washing pile lately and the books that’ve fallen there when Louis can't be arsed to make room for them on the desk, and his frown gets even deeper.

And Louis thinks he ought to feel ashamed, given the way Nick’s looking at everything, but he just...doesn’t.

Doesn’t even feel the need to get defensive about it either.

Not that it's surprising, the not being able to feel anything.

Apart from the stinging in his chest, and even that’s fading away.

"I get distracted,” he says, looking down and playing with the seam of the duvet. His sleeve hat falls off his head, landing in his lap, and he picks it up and starts looping it around his fingers. "And I forget.”

"What?”

Nick looks confused when Louis sneaks a glance at him.

"I…” Louis says, putting his hand in his hair and pulling at his fringe. "I...you know what? Think I will go to lunch with you. Been ages since I saw Aims. ‘Bout due for a catching up with her, yeah?”

He tosses the duvet back without waiting for Nick’s response and stumbles over several pairs of shoes on his way over to the wardrobe, throwing the doors open and digging around until he finds something big enough to hide in. It ends up being the grey jumper with the very low neckline, and Louis will probably melt in it, since it's now fucking _July_ , but he likes being able to pull his hands into his sleeves, especially if he’s someplace other than the flat these days.

It’s comforting and he doesn’t know why, just that he’s got a feeling he's going to need that comfort if he’s to get through lunch with Nick’s friends without feeling _absolutely_ out of sorts.

He’s just pulled it on and then kicked off his joggers when he feels Nick’s hand on his arm.

Of course he starts, and Nick steps back, muttering out a _sorry_ and tugging at his hair.

"All right there, Nicholas?” Louis asks, finding a pair of jeans and stepping into them. They’re loose over his bum, which is new, but he’s sure it's just because they're old and stretched out or something. 

Nick looks back at Louis’s desk, still frowning, and then over at his bed, his mouth opening like he’s about to say something, only to change his mind at the last second and shake his head.

“I’m fine, love,” he says, smile creeping back onto his face as he’s reaching out for Louis’s arm again and holding him steady while he’s sliding his feet into a pair of Vans.

The _I don’t think you are_ goes unsaid, but Louis hears it anyway.

~*~

Lunch is at a tapas bar on South Street, a terribly poncy-looking place all done up in red and brown with weird light fixtures in the loo, but it’s got air con, and Nick lets him eat off his plate and keeps getting him bottles of Corona when he asks, so all said, it's actually not too bad.

At least it's not too bad until Louis has to go and open his big mouth. 

Later, of course, he will blame the beer, all five or six bottles of it, because if it wasn't for that, then he wouldn't have fallen right out of the booth on his millionth trip to the loo with the weird lights, and if he hadn't fallen, then Nick wouldn’t have asked him if he was all right as he was helping him up and _then_ there would have been absolutely _no_ reason for him to say, very, very loudly, “I am _fine_ , Nicholas. Right as rain, me. Haven’t felt a fucking thing since fucking April and it’s fucking _grand_.”

Nick’s mouth falls open right as Louis realises what he’s said, and he scrubs a hand over his face, muttering “fuck.”

"Is that true?” he hears Nick ask, and he just shuts his eyes and nods his head, because there's no fucking point in lying about it _now_. And before Nick can say anything else, Louis claps his hand over his mouth and runs off to the loo before he has a chance to be sick all over the table.

He makes it into a stall in time for everything to come up all nice and burning and wretched, and he’s just sat back on his heels, gasping for breath, when he hears the door slide shut.

"It’s all right, Nicholas,” he says, his voice scratchy, as he’s reaching for something to wipe his face off with. “Just had too much, yeah? You know how I get. Say things I shouldn't.”

“‘M not Nick,” he hears Harry say, which has him dropping his wad of loo roll right into his lap. “He’s, um, I said I’d come.”

"Why?” Louis asks, picking it back up and wiping his face off and then trying to get some of the sick out of his fringe. 

"I didn’t think you’d want to…” Harry says, and Louis can hear the sound of the tap being turned on. "I didn’t think you’d...want him to see you...like...this.”

Louis can’t help but laugh. 

"He's seen me like this before, Harold,” he says. "Morning after Lemonfest. I was a sight.”

"Lemonfest was in...May.”

"At the end, yeah. What’s your point?”

There’s a squeak that's the tap being turned off.

“You said...it’s been since April,” Harry says, coming up behind him and dangling a damp paper towel over his shoulder.

"Heard that did you?” Louis asks, taking it and starting back to work on his hair.

"Everyone heard it.”

Louis stiffens.

"Everyone needs to mind their own goddamn business,” he says, pulling a little harder on his hair than is probably necessary.

"They will…” Harry says, “but…”

“But _what_?”

Louis is getting _really_ tired of people not finishing their sentences around him.

"But why didn't you...tell us?”

“Not, like, everyone,” he adds, as Louis finishes with his hair and has another, tougher, go at his face. "But you could’ve told me. Or Nick. He looked like he didn't even know.”

"He doesn't,” Louis says, mostly into the paper towel so it comes out muffled. "No one does.”

"Why not?”

“Because it’s _nothing_ ,” Louis snaps, standing up and clenching his hands into fists so he doesn't start throwing things. “It’s nothing and it’s mine, and it’s not gone away after all this time, so I'm stuck with it, and I don’t want to talk about something _that_ _can't be fucking fixed_.”

He shoulders past Harry and storms toward the door, and he’s just pulled it open when he hears, “I think you do.”

“Or you wouldn’t have said,” Harry adds, looking him right in the eye when he turns around. “I think you...want to talk about it, but there's, like, some...reason that you just...don’t.”

"Because it's fucking _pointless_ is why,” Louis says, letting go of the door and having it swing shut behind him. "Because nothing anybody says is going to _change_ it or make it go away and let me feel a goddamn thing for once in me fucking life and have it fucking _stick,_ so there's no fucking point in talking about it, is there?”

Harry’s face falls, and he takes a step forward, his arms starting to go up like he’s going to pull him into a hug or something, except that is the _last_ fucking thing Louis wants, someone _touching_ him on his hot, itchy skin.

So he turns around, so fast that he almost spins, and scrabbles at the door handle, wrenching it open and stepping through. The air’s clearer in the restaurant, and the sun outside is like a fucking beacon, so he starts toward the exit, not stopping until he hears Nick call out his name.

He’s pale and breathless when he catches up to him, and he’s still beautiful even with one of his shirt sleeves missing and that look on his face that Louis hates.

Fuck, but Louis loves him.

He really fucking does, and it’s buried somewhere deep inside, but he knows it's there. 

“I’m taking the bus back,” he says, before Nick can say anything. “Be at the flat, all right?”

Nick nods and shoves some of his hair off of his forehead.

"Just be letting everyone know,” he says, taking a half a step back. "Be back in a minute.”

He's already turned around and taken a couple of steps when Louis says, “Thought I’d go by myself.”

"I just...need to be on me own for a bit,” he adds, pulling his hands into his sleeves, so grateful they're so long and stretched out. "I’ll ring you when it's okay, yeah?”

Nick’s quiet for a very long time, and then...he laughs.

He fucking _laughs_ , and if Louis had a heart, he thinks this would be the point where it dropped straight down to his shoes.

“If you think that I'm at least not seeing you back to yours, then you are sadly mistaken,” he says, his eyes dark and his tone about the sharpest Louis has ever heard it. "Wait here. I'll be right back.”

So Louis waits, because what else can he do with Nick looking and sounding like that, and it isn't very long until Nick's back at his side, saying something that sounds an awful lot like “Gonna make sure he's home all right.”

Louis looks up in time to see Harry nod.

He’d been so focused on his sleeves that he didn't even notice him come up, and yet there he is, stood right beside Louis and nodding at Nick.

"I’ll get the bill then,” he says, casting a glance at Louis. "Catch up with you...later.”

“Later, yeah,” Nick says, giving him a wave and then opening the door. His fingertips brush across Louis’s lower back, and if it wasn't for the _get home, get home now_ clanging around inside his head, Louis really would stomp his foot and scream at him, scream at both of them for treating him like he’s a child made out of glass.

He isn’t fucking _fragile_. He just really needs to _go_.

Go somewhere quiet and _alone_ , and stay there until the noise stops.

The sun’s blinding when he steps out into it, and it makes his eyes hurt, but the bus stop at least has the decency to be not more than five minutes away. Nick doesn’t say anything as they’re walking, and he’s still quiet once they’re on the bus. He doesn't try taking Louis’s hand, staring out of the window on the opposite aisle instead, and it’s not until the bus pulls away from the curb that Louis feels like the world's stopped spinning so much, like the itch has subsided and he might be able to breathe again.

He slowly, cautiously, slides his hand underneath Nick’s, and despite how damp it is, Nick takes it, interlocking their fingers and squeezing it once.

Louis lets out a breath and shuts his eyes, resting his head on Nick’s arm.

"You can stay if you don’t talk,” he says, turning so he’s mostly mumbling into Nick’s skin.

“Okay,” Nick says, and it’s so soft that Louis just barely hears it.

"Promise you won't.”

Nick huffs out a laugh.

"I can't promise that, Lou.”

And Louis knows that, he does, but, "you’ll try?”

“Yeah,” Nick says, mostly on an exhale and squeezing his hand again. 

"I’ll try.”

~*~

Nick, surprisingly, turns out to be very good at not talking.

He follows Louis into the flat without a word, and he doesn’t say anything as they’re walking to his bedroom. He sits on the bed while Louis closes his curtains, blocking out the entirely too bright sun that doesn't even feel warm anymore, and he takes his shoes off without a bit of protest when Louis tells him to, crawling under the duvet with him once he's done and wrapping his arms around Louis’s shoulders when he burrows his way between his legs and buries his face in his chest. 

It’s suffocating, being pressed that close and under the duvet in the middle of summer, and Louis knows they can't stay there forever, knows that Nick and his wonky lungs couldn't take it for very long at all, but he keeps them under, matching his breathing to the rhythm of Nick’s chest against his forehead, until he can feel his hair going damp and his shirt beginning to stick to his back.

He wriggles out from Nick’s grasp and throws the duvet back, air hitting his face and making him shiver, and there’s a chill that runs down his spine when he pulls Nick’s jumper off and sends it flying...somewhere. He kicks his jeans off after it, and it’s not until he’s heard them land that he finally turns around to look at Nick.

His eyes are wide and his cheeks are too pink and his hair’s a mess, half of it stuck to his forehead, so Louis shifts enough that he can brush it away, trailing his fingers down the side of Nick’s face after and then lightly pressing them into his jaw.

"Didn’t get too hot did you?” he asks, voice low as he’s dragging his thumb along Nick’s jawline. It’s warm and a bit scratchy, and it feels fucking _wonderful_.

"No,” Nick says in a whisper, and Louis’s gaze slides down to his mouth.

His really, very lovely, mouth, and there’s something screaming at him to just lean over and kiss him, and Louis _wants_ to, wants to so badly and yet...he can't.

He _can’t_ kiss Nick and not feel anything but pain after, _can’t_ go through that again, and the air seems to leave his lungs all at once.

His fingers fall away from Nick’s face, but before he can get too far, Nick grabs him by the wrist, pressing a kiss into his palm, and somehow Louis’s ears fucking _heat_.

It’s so sudden and so surprising that Louis can't help but laugh, and it sounds a bit crazy and wheezy and breathless, but then Nick’s _smiling_ at him, so wide and bright and genuine, and guiding Louis’s hand back to his cheek.

"Think I like it better this way,” he says, rubbing Louis’s hand up his jawline and back down, and it’s scratchy and warm against his palm, so much so that Louis thinks he feels a tingle all the way down his arm.

"I’m not walking around with my hand glued to your face, Nicholas,” he says, and Nick laughs, sending the air back into Louis’s lungs.

"Why not?” he asks. "Seem to remember you liking my face. You even said so once.”

“I’d never,” Louis says, although he has the vague memory of saying something to the effect that he quite liked Nick’s hair and his voice and his face at some point in the distant past.

He’s not about to admit it, however.

“But you did,” Nick says, covering Louis’s hand with his own and holding it in place. "Got it on paper and everything.”

"Since when?”

“Since you wrote it in that book I wasn’t supposed to read,” Nick says. "The one with the poems that weren't about shoes.”

"No poem is ever about shoes,” Louis says, shaking his head and getting up on his knees so he can move closer to Nick. He nearly topples sideways while he’s at it, but Nick keeps his grip tight on his hand, not letting go until Louis drops down into his lap. Louis nudges him in the shoulder until he lifts his arm, and then he slides underneath, snaking his arm around Nick’s back and resting his hand on Nick’s waist. He has a thought to shut his eyes when he feels Nick rest his chin atop his head, but he decides, and it’s odd really, that just this once he’d like to keep them open.

“Suppose you could write one,” Nick says, and Louis can feel it in his hair his lips are so close.

"Could,” Louis agrees. "But I’m not gonna.”

"Why not?”

“Hate writing poetry,” Louis says, pushing his face a bit harder into Nick’s chest. “S’like you’ve got to be all profound and shit, and I'm just...I’d rather read it, is all.”

"The Joyce ones were simple-like,” Nick says, and Louis really can't argue with that, so he doesn't. 

“Rather like song lyrics, weren't they?”

He can feel Nick’s nod, and that’s when he finally decides to shut his eyes and try matching his breathing up to Nick’s, in and out and in and out. It’s nice, how simple and repetitive it is, and it’s calming, _really_ calming, and the only thing swirling around Louis’s mind is the colour yellow.

Yellow through his eyelids, a nice, rosy, warm yellow, not the pale glare of the sun outside, the glare that's been following him since the day of his nan’s funeral, washing everything out and illuminating the wall, all tall and grey and thick.

"It’s massive,” he says, before he can even stop himself.

He feels Nick start and then his arm gets tighter around his shoulder. 

"What is?” Nick asks, and it’s in a whisper.

Louis adjusts his grip on Nick’s waist and buries his nose as far as he can in Nick’s lopsided t-shirt.

“It’s like...a wall,” he says, and it’s so strange how his heart isn’t pounding as he’s talking, how his throat isn’t dry, and how he’s not all shaking and scared. "It’s a big, massive wall, and _everything_ is behind it, and it was so nice at first because nothing hurt, but then nothing felt good either, and I don’t...I think it's forever, because I don't know how to get it to go away.”

Nick’s quiet for a very long time before he says, “Since April.”

"Yeah,” Louis says. "The day of the funeral, it was like someone flipped a switch, turning everything off, and I don’t know how to flip it back.”

"I don't think it can be flipped back,” he adds, when Nick doesn’t say anything.

Louis doesn’t even know if he _wants_ Nick saying anything, especially since he’d never intended to talk about it at all, the sheer pointlessness of talking about it entirely too overwhelming, but it’s surprisingly okay having it out there at last.

Or maybe that's just the wall too, stepping in between him and his anxieties, even though he still thinks he’d take those back too if it meant he got to feel _something_ , whatever the hell it was.

And have it stay.

“Do you think…” Nick says at last, only to trail off and try to pull Louis closer.

He’s quiet for so long that Louis has to ask, “Do I think what?”

“I don’t know,” Nick says, in an almost sort of mumble. "I’m sorry. I don't...I have no idea.”

"You don’t have to,” Louis says, because he doesn't want Nick knowing what it feels like, that emptiness that consumes until it's all that's left.

"No it’s just…” Nick says, his fingers twitching on Louis’s shoulder like he’d rather have them somewhere else. “I thought you might but...I guess I thought I’d...know for sure somehow and I could, you know, help, distract you like I'm supposed to do.”

"It wouldn't have worked,” Louis says, and he thinks he feels Nick flinch. "Not for long. It always comes back.”

"Always?”

Louis nods.

"And it’s everything that's behind it?”

Louis nods again. 

"Am I behind it?”

Louis turns his head so that he’s got his entire face buried in Nick’s chest and then he breathes out a _yes._

"I don't want you back there,” he says, a bit louder and rather choked for some reason, and it’s odd because he isn’t crying, doesn’t even feel like he _could_ cry. "But you’re back there with everything else, and I don’t feel like I can get you out.”

"Don't think I like being back there,” Nick says, working his fingers into Louis’s hair and rubbing at his scalp. "Don't think I like that at all.”

"I can't get you out,” Louis says, and he thinks he's beginning to sound desperate. Maybe he is. "It’s like I can see you and everything back there, but I can't...reach and there’s...nothing in me that's able to try hard enough.”

_To give me strength,_ he thinks, and that really is it, isn't it?

He’s just not strong enough, and he is so fucking tired. 

Exhausted, more like.

Because it _is_ exhausting, dragging that wall around with him wherever he goes, and he doesn’t feel yellow anymore but a dark slate grey, like the rain and the fog have come and blocked out the light.

He turns his head to the side and opens his eyes, just to check and see if the sun’s still there, and it is, but he can’t feel it, can't even feel it mocking him like it usually does. It’s a winter sun in the middle of summer, far away and pale, and Louis can't help but shiver.

"It’s going to be okay,” Nick says eventually, shattering the silence. He tucks a bit of Louis’s hair behind his ear, and he keeps smoothing back the strands long after they need it. "We’re going to figure it out, you and me.”

"Are we?”

It manages to sound hopeful and doubtful all at the same time.

"We are,” Nick says with a slight nod into the top of Louis’s head. "Because we do, yeah? Like you said, doesn’t matter if it's a bit or more than a bit or whatever. We just do and we’re going to figure it out.”

And Louis knows what he means, but he still can't help but doubt.

But he’s also _really_ tired of talking about it, having said more in the past few minutes than he’d ever planned to say, well, ever, so he just holds Nick tighter and shuts his eyes and tries to will himself to believe.

~*~

They’re still sat like that, upright with Louis in Nick’s lap, when Harry almost literally blows in in a rush of hot air and hair and worry, so much worry that his eyes are huge with it. He stands there and pants and fidgets until Louis stretches out an arm to him, and then it’s almost like he deflates, sort of sagging onto the bed and crawling over and letting Louis pull him into a one-armed hug.

“It’s all right,” Louis says, moving his hand and tugging on one of Harry’s curls, something he hasn't done in a long while but feels oddly necessary in the moment. "I’m okay.”

He can feel Nick tense against him, and Harry starts to shake his head, but Louis _is not fragile_ , isn't a _child_ , so he grabs an entire handful of Harry’s hair to hold him still.

“I _am_ ,” he insists, at the same time as he’s tightening his grip on Nick’s waist. "Just because I don't...feel anything doesn’t mean I’m...broken or something.”

"How can you not...feel anything and be okay?” Harry asks, and he somehow sounds choked-up and angry at the same time.

Nick’s fingers tense where he’s got them in Louis’s hair, and from the way he’s almost holding his breath, it seems, he must be thinking the same damn thing.

“I just...can,” Louis says, and his stupid voice has the nerve to crack. He tightens his grip on Nick and Harry before they can say anything. “I’m...used to it, yeah? So it's, like, normal for me.”

"It shouldn't be normal, Lou,” Harry says, grabbing a fistful of Louis’s shirt and tapping his thumb against Louis’s spine. "That’s...not a normal thing.”

"It’s really not, no,” Nick says, but his fingers have gone back to massaging Louis’s scalp instead of pulling at his hair. 

And Louis gets that, because it isn't right, not feeling things, however nice it was in the beginning. It feels like a piece is missing, and he _knows_ it’s his heart, his fucked-up piece of shit heart, but…

“I don’t know how to get it back,” he says, and his hands are starting to cramp from how hard he’s holding on to Nick and Harry, but he can’t let them go. It’ll be so much worse if he lets them go. “It’s all...locked up, behind that wall I told you about, and I can see it, can see everything, but I can't get to it. Can't...get it to stay. It’s like...I’m allowed to look at it, but I can't...I can't ever touch it.”

_If I could touch it, then maybe it would stay_ , he thinks, and it’s such a wild idea that he dismisses it almost as soon as it comes.

"But I'm not broken or anything either,” he says, with a small shake of his head, because he _isn’t,_ and Nick and Harry, and Liam he supposes, all need to know that. "I’ve...it’s been worse before, back home, and this is easy compared to that, so it's really not as bad as it sounds.”

And if he still has a bottle of sleeping pills buried in a drawer, then no one really needs to know that but himself, do they?

Besides, they're probably expired, the pills, but he likes knowing that they're there, like they're insurance or something, in case he just really, really needs to go to sleep and not wake up.

"It still sounds bad,” Harry says, and he sounds so grumpy and put-out that Louis can't help but laugh a little and ruffle his hair.

"It could be a lot worse, Harold,” he says. "It’s _been_ worse. This is a walk in the fucking park compared to before.”

"And he's got us, yeah?” Nick puts in, and Louis can feel him move his hand and poke at Harry’s head. "We’re gonna figure it out, all of us, because we're all very smart lads, and we do, in one way or another.”

"We do what?” Harry asks, but Louis rather likes him not knowing what _that_ is, at least not yet, so he claps a hand over Nick's mouth before he can stutter out anything.

"We do marvellous things, my curly friend,” he says, moving his hand to pull on said curls again and, not even thinking, pressing a kiss to Nick’s lips. They’re still so damn _nice_ against his own, and it actually doesn't fucking hurt, which is one hell of a pleasant surprise, so he laughs, actually fucking _laughs_ , and winds his free hand into Nick’s hair, kissing him harder. He feels Nick smile into it, and so he doesn't stop until he hears Harry clear his throat.

"I really do not want to be here for that,” he says, trying to move away, only Louis won't let him. "Especially if you're already down to your pants, Lou.”

"S’a pants party, Harold,” Louis returns, pulling away from Nick and his pink cheeks and shiny eyes and poking Harry in the arm. “And I’m the only one dressed appropriately, it would seem.”

"I’ve already got one of my sleeves off,” Nick says, sort of waving his arm about as best he can and jostling Louis in the process.

"You do,” Louis says, leaning back and grabbing Nick’s arm so he'll be still. “Think it’s about time you matched though.”

"Don't know,” Nick says, glancing down at his intact sleeve, his face lighting up when he sees Louis start to pull on it. "Think I liked my LL shirt.”

"What's an LL shirt?” he hears Harry ask, and he finally lets go of him so he can better get at Nick’s sleeve.

"My shirt as of a minute ago, apparently,” Nick says, right at the end of a rather loud rip. "Now my arm’s gonna be all cold.”

"It’s _July_ , Nicholas,” Louis says, batting at his nose with the sleeve, and Nick gusts out a laugh that for a very split second has him feeling not quite yellow but an almost shocking rosy pink.

Pink like, inexplicably, the tips of his ears.

It fades almost as soon as it’d come on, but Louis _felt_ it, it was _there_ , and perhaps, he thinks, there might just be a way to put a crack in the wall after all. 

Perhaps even a... _permanent_ one.

He tosses Nick’s sleeve over his shoulder, ignoring the “heyyyy” he hears from Harry, and cups Nick’s cheeks in his hands, pulling him closer and kissing him out of what he supposes is gratitude and stupid, dizzying hope.

And Nick doesn’t stop smiling because he is lovely, especially in this light that's gone a softer, late afternoon gold, and it's always been thing he does, now that Louis thinks about it, smiling and lighting up a room and Louis at the very same time.

Yes, _Louis_ is so stupid, and it’s over him.

So, so incredibly stupid.

"It’s going to be okay,” Nick says, resting his forehead against Louis’s and speaking so low that Louis can barely hear him. "We're going to figure it out.”

Louis nods and shuts his eyes and lets Nick pull him into a hug, tucking his face into Nick’s neck and wrapping his arms around his waist. He lets his breathing go slow, and it’s so calming, just focusing on the mechanics of it and on the warmth of Nick’s arms around his shoulders, that his mind actually goes blank, not that listless, empty blankness, but something else he can't quite put his finger on. Whatever it is, _peace_ a ridiculous part of him puts in, he almost wishes he could bottle it up and carry it around so he won't ever forget what it feels like.

“I’m thinking we should let Harold there pick the film,” Nick says eventually. "Only fair, innit? If he’s getting his kit off with us.”

He hears Harry snort out a laugh, and when he twists around, he sees him shaking his head, even though his hands are already inching their way toward his zip.

"I’m absolutely kidding,” he says, moving them away at the last minute, and he turns and starts to leave, but he doesn’t get very far before Louis lunges at him and grabs him by the wrist.

"You can leave only if you come back with something to drink,” he says, tugging on his arm.

"I want wine,” he hears Nick say. “Got to be classy in our pants, yeah?”

“You are right about that, Nicholas,” Louis says, shooting him a smile and then turning back to Harry, pulling on his arm and chanting “wine” at him until he's laughing too hard to try and get his arm away. 

"Okay fine,” he says, drawing out the _i_ and almost falling over when Louis very abruptly lets go of his arm.

“If you’re going to make jokes, Harold,” he says, poking at Harry’s bent head, “then you’re not allowed to pick the films.”

Harry actually appears to consider it, standing up straight and stroking his chin.

"Was thinking about...a marathon,” he says finally.

"A marathon,” Louis says, when Harry just stops and smiles at him.

Harry's smile grows wider, and he nods his head very, very slowly.

And Louis, he has a very good idea just exactly what Harry means by a marathon.

"Better get the big box then,” he says, picking up a pillow and whacking Harry with it until he leaves.

~*~

They’re halfway through _The Desolation of Smaug_ and a lot of the way through an enormous box of Tesco Spanish Red, Louis tucked into Nick’s side and Harry’s head smashed against his arm, when Louis begins to think that he might actually be okay.

The real okay, not the okay only because things aren't terrible okay.

Or, if nothing else, that there’s at least the possibility that he’ll get there someday.


	2. Chapter 2

“I miss Liam.”

Louis looks up from where he’s been helping Harry sort the washing.

"He's coming home tomorrow, isn’t he?” he asks, dangling a purple sock, he thinks it's Nick’s, in front of Harry’s face.

Harry takes it and puts it with its match.

"Yeah but…” he says, picking up a green and orange striped pair and frowning down at it. Louis takes them and sticks them on his own feet before they notice. "I just...wanted to see him sooner.”

"You wanted to see him sooner,” Louis says, kicking Harry’s pants over to him and then leaning back on his hands.

Harry looks up at him and nods.

And Louis would kind of like to see Liam already himself, a fortnight without him, it turns out, is stupidly long, but he still can't help but say, with a bit of a laugh, “You’re so gone. You know that, right?”

Harry laughs and nods his head again, his smile wide and the tips of his ears pink.

"Stupidly gone,” Louis adds, reaching out a foot and tapping him on the knee.

"I suppose you would know...how that is,” Harry says, grabbing his ankle and digging his thumb in.

“I have no idea what you're talking about,” he says, using his other foot to kick him in the shin at the same time as he’s tipping his head back to look at Nick doing the washing up in the kitchen. "Isn't anybody I fancy that much,” he adds, loud enough for Nick to hear.

"Nope. Not you,” Nick says, looking away from the plate in his hands, his cheeks as pink as his stupid tiny shorts. Louis likes those shorts, even though he can't help but remember what happened, or didn't happen, the last time Nick had them on.

"See, Harold?” he says, kicking his foot out again while he’s still looking at Nick. Nick sticks his tongue out at him, and he laughs.

"I do see,” he hears Harry say. “See more than I’d like, honestly.”

"Jealousy isn’t very flattering on you, you know,” Louis says, tapping out a rhythm on Harry’s leg. "And here I was thinking we could go get him.”

"Get him?” Harry asks, pulling at Louis’s ankle until he looks at him.

"Yep,” Louis says, moving his foot and poking Harry in the stomach. "We pile into the Renault and we drive to Wolverhampton and we put Liam in the Renault and we drive back. We go get him.”

Harry just blinks at him, even though it’s the best fucking idea ever, and Louis is just about to poke him again when he hears Nick say, “I’m up for it.”

“Of course you’re up for it, Nicholas,” Louis says, tipping his head back again. “You’re a good lad.”

Nick beams at him.

"I'm your favourite lad,” he says, finishing off the plate in his hands and picking up another one. “So when do we leave?”

“Dunno,” Louis says, even as he’s already standing and trying to pull Harry up with him. "Was thinking now might be good.”

"Right now?” he hears Nick ask, and he nods even though he’s still looking at Harry, whose smile’s just getting bigger and bigger.

"Go put on some trousers, Nicholas,” he says, socking Harry in the arm. "Because yes, right now.”

~*~

"WOLVERHAMPTON!” Louis yells once they’ve got on the M5. The sun’s stupidly bright, but it’s not mocking, and the sky is so blue and everything is so green and he’s _moving_ and for once, it just feels really fucking _good_.

"LIAM!” Harry yells from the backseat, and Louis laughs and punches the roof.

"LEEYUM!” he shouts back, and then not so loud, “You didn’t ring him, did you?”

In the rear view mirror he can see Harry shake his head.

"I had the feeling,” he says, “that you wanted it to be a...surprise.”

"You would be right about that, Harold,” he says, well impressed. "Although...do either of you happen to know where exactly our Payno lives?”

The car gets silent in a heartbeat.

Even Nick’s music stops.

"Seemed important,” he says when Louis looks over at him, his hand hovering over the volume button.

"Yeah,” Louis says, beginning to slow down. His mood’s dropping so fast that he can almost physically feel it.

And he's contemplating just turning back, because maybe this wasn't the best fucking idea ever, when Nick's hand lands on his arm, startling him.

"We can always ring him when we get there,” he says when Louis looks over at him. "That way we're not driving around endlessly but it’s still a surprise, like you wanted.”

"I’m ringing him then,” Harry puts in, while Louis is still trying to sort out what feels an awful lot like relief, and once he finally gets _that_ straight, he reaches back and punches Harry in the knee.

"Are not,” he says, pinching Nick’s sunglasses from off the top of his head and sliding them on. "You're part of the surprise too.”

‘Am I?” Harry asks, and Louis thinks he sounds pleased.

Good.

"You are,” he says, reaching around and punching him one more time before turning the music back on and twisting the dial as far up as it’ll go.

He hears Nick laugh, and he has just enough time between hitting the accelerator and changing gears to reach over and squeeze his hand, hoping Nick can hear it as the _thank you_ that it is.

~*~

The problem with spontaneous road trips, as opposed to planned ones, is that once the initial euphoria of doing something so unexpected wears off, there's not a lot left to do but sit and wait until you get to whatever place you'd decided to just take off to on the spur of the moment.

In other words, Louis is _bored_.

And it’s not like he isn’t used to boredom, everything that isn't numbness is boredom, but still, he's bored and it’s annoying.

He’s bored and annoyed and he thinks he’d rather like to just go to sleep.

“Somebody drive,” he says, pulling into a petrol station somewhere near Taunton.

Neither Nick nor Harry, mercifully, say anything about it being his idea so _he_ should drive, and the instant he sees Nick unfastening his seatbelt he undoes his and throws his door open.

“You’re a champ, Nicholas,” he says, clapping him on the shoulder as they’re passing by the bonnet.

"I’m the best, you mean,” Nick says, once they’re back in the Renault, and Louis musters up a smile for him even as he’s shaking his head.

"You're something all right,” he says, reaching over and pulling at Nick’s hair. Nick bats his hand away, and it makes him laugh.

He laughs, and yet, in the short, short time it takes for Nick to get them back on the M5, it's like the feeling’s already long gone.

Louis shuts his eyes, wrapping his arms as tight as he can around himself, and tries, not that it's going to take much, to will himself to sleep.

~*~

"Louis.”

Someone’s poking him.

"Lou.”

Someone with bony, annoying fingers.

"We’re here.”

_Here?_

Louis blinks his eyes open.

His mouth is dry, and his neck hurts.

And just outside his window is an enormous white house. The sun’s hitting it from the front, and it’s almost blinding.

Louis shuts his eyes, just in time for those bony, annoying fingers to go poking at him again.

"Go ‘way,” he says, turning and trying to bury his face in his seat cushion. His seatbelt ends up going across his nose, but it blocks out the light so Louis doesn’t bother moving it.

"We’re at Liam’s,” a voice says, and it sounds like Nick. 

"Good for us,” he says, right before one of the back doors opens and then slams shut.

"You're not letting Harry go in by himself, are you?”

Louis’s eyes pop back open, and he moves the seatbelt out of the way enough so he can see as the door to the enormous bright white house opens and Liam comes out, his smile wide and surprised as Harry’s loping up to him.

Louis can’t help his own smile.

He likes it when other people are happy, even when he's not.

“Give ‘em a minute,” he says, watching as Liam and Harry stop just short of hugging each other, Harry’s shoulders going up in a shrug and Liam’s hand reaching out to tug at his hair. "They're so gross it's kinda cute.”

"You're just as bad,” Nick says, hovering right beside him, his cheek almost pressed up against Louis’s own. "Actually, you're worse I think.”

"Lies,” Louis says, although he knows that if it were him and Nick, he’d be wrapped around Nick’s waist already and clinging to him like a limpet. “I’m nothing but dignity and restraint, me.”

"Sure you are,” Nick says, resting his chin on Louis’s shoulder. "Sometimes I don't even know if you like me.”

And once upon a time, not very long ago, a statement like that would have sent Louis’s heart plummeting, but, since he hasn't got one, he just tips his head into Nick’s and says, “Whatever would make you think that I do?”

It’s a relief, at least, to not be scared.

"Think that teacup you got me was a hint.”

"I just didn't want you using mine,” Louis says, even though he can still see the look on Nick’s face as he’d handed it over. It’d been bright pink and ridiculous with a fat black pig on the side and the word _lady_ underneath, and it'd been so perfect that Louis had almost ran straight home from the shop with it.

“That is what you said when you were giving it to me,” Nick says, and Louis can feel him nod.

"Didn’t want to wake up with a sudden and undying love for Death Cab, now did I?” he says, keeping his eyes on Harry and Liam as they’re _finally_ leaning in closer to each other. 

"You like Death Cab already,” Nick says, turning and planting a kiss on Louis’s cheek. "I’ve seen the music on your phone.”

"If you’ve seen it then you’re capable of putting more on there, aren't you?” Louis says, even though “Crooked Teeth” is absolutely his and did a hell of a lot for him during first year.

"I would be,” Nick says. "Except I’d be more original and put, I dunno, house music on it or summat. Something to really annoy you with.”

“I’d delete them,” Louis says, opening the door once he sees Harry and Liam turn and start to walk toward the car.

“I’d change the names so you wouldn’t know,” Nick says, and Louis finally looks over at him. 

“No you wouldn’t,” he says as he’s undoing his seatbelt. “You’re not nearly that devious.”

“Probably not no,” Nick says, leaning back and opening his own door. “Not that dedicated to a prank either.”

“That’s why you’ve got me,” Louis says, reaching over and patting Nick’s knee. He's just got one foot out the door when Liam reaches in and pulls him right out, bundling him into a hug that's so tight he can barely breathe. "All right, Li?”

Liam nods and squeezes him again, and all Louis can do is pat his back and wonder _what the hell?_

"I worried,” Liam says, right into his ear. "I’m sorry. I couldn't help it.”

"It’s okay,” Louis says, automatically, even as his hand's frozen mid-air and all the air that managed to somehow stay in his lungs despite Liam and his bear hug having just left in one big _whoosh_. He glances over at Harry, whose eyes are huge as he’s shaking his head. "It’s what you do.”

Liam huffs out a laugh and finally lets him go.

“Because I’m Dad, like you say,” he says, stepping back and closer to Harry. "Figured I ought to be living up to it or something, you know.”

"Don't think you need to worry about that, Leeyum,” Louis says, suddenly grateful he has to turn around and shut his door. He just...doesn’t think he could stand to look at Liam for very long, look at that earnestness, and then crash all over it by letting him know he’d sort of been lied to. By letting him know Louis had kept something from him. "Think you manage quite well without having to try at all.”

He thinks he hears Liam laugh, and by the time he's turned back around, Liam’s smiling with his hands stuck in his pockets, but it’s warm and...okay. 

It’s just...okay.

 _He’s_ okay.

“So just how surprised are you there, Payno?” he asks, stepping forward and slinging his arm around Liam’s neck, then twisting them both about so they’re facing the house. "Best surprise ever, innit?”

He's sure he can actually _feel_ Liam go pink as he’s mumbling out a “yes” and looking over at Harry, and Louis has an arm free, so he sort of lurches them sideways so he can grab Harry too.

“Harold missed you terribly,” he says. "Wouldn’t stop going on about it until we decided, just this morning actually, that we’d come get you just to shut him up.”

"That isn't at all how it happened,” Harry says, but he's laughing.

"It is,” Louis says, very solemnly and nodding his head. "He was _distraught,_ Liam. We thought he was going to waste away for pining.”

He yelps when Harry digs a finger into his side.

"You just didn't want to do the washing,” Harry says, and he’s right because Louis doesn’t ever want to do the washing, not really, but lately it's been much less about that and more about how he can't remember shit.

He shakes his head.

He's not fucking thinking about that right now.

Not at _all_ , so it can just fuck right off back to Exeter where it belongs and he will deal with it there.

And so he says, loudly, “So are we introducing Harold here to your parents, _Leeyum_? Let them know just what sort of person their son’s taken up with?”

Harry coughs, and Liam says, very quietly, “They already know.”

Louis stops mid-stride.

"Do they really?” he asks, looking right at Liam, who nods his head.

"We told them on Skype right after I got home,” he says, glancing at Harry and then at Louis. "You know after...well you know, they get...worried about me. Want to know if I’m being done right by and stuff.”

"And do they know?” Louis asks.

"I think so,” Liam says, and Louis lets his arm drop as Harry’s letting go of him, letting go of Liam next as Harry’s coming around and taking his hand. 

"Let's go see them,” he says, and there’s a bit of a wobble in his voice, but Liam squeezes his hand, and Louis thinks, at least in his opinion that he knows doesn’t count for a whole lot, that they're gonna be all right.

He says as much, patting Harry on the back and pushing him forward a little, adding, "Who doesn't love you, Harold? No one, that's who, so go along and let Karen smother you for a bit like you know she wants to.”

"She really does,” Liam says, over his shoulder as he’s leading Harry away. "Been on about it for weeks.”

"There you go then,” Louis says, putting his arm around Nick’s waist as he’s coming up and draping his arm across Louis’s shoulders. "Tell them hello for me yeah?”

“You’re coming in too!” Liam shouts, already halfway across the front garden, and Louis waves him off.

“In a minute!” he shouts back, tucking himself further into Nick’s side.

"They're not going to eat him alive in there, are they?” Nick asks, and Louis laughs.

"They couldn't if they tried,” he says. "Karen’s probably the kindest person you’ll ever meet, and Geoff’s Liam’s biggest fan, but he’s all right too, and you know how Harold is.”

"My mum does like him better than me.”

"Everyone's mum likes him better.”

"It’s the dimples I think.”

"Or the manners,” Louis says, and Nick laughs.

"Probably,” he says, rubbing his thumb across Louis’s shoulder. He’s quiet for a while, and then he says, quite low, “So, uh, speaking of mums, we’re not...terribly far from mine. Couple hours I think. And since we're here, we could...if you wanted...go see her?”

“Are you asking me?” Louis says, a weird lump in his throat that he’d ordinarily think of as his long-lost heart.

Nick’s grip gets tighter on his shoulder and he gusts out a _yeah_.

“But only if you want to,” he adds, still sounding a little breathless. "Know how it is, meeting the folks.”

Louis can’t help but laugh, and that’s weird too because he also can't help but remember just how Nick had met his folks.

"Suppose you would,” he says, tipping his head back. Nick’s suddenly looking very pale. "So what’s she like, your mum?”

Nick somehow gets even paler.

"She's, um,” he says, still looking straight ahead, biting his lip and squinting at the house Harry and Liam have long since disappeared into. "She's...mum-like.”

"Mum-like.”

"Yeah,” Nick says, running his free hand through his hair. "Always on me about eating my veg and when am I going to bring up that Louis I'm always on about.”

"Always on about?”

Louis digs his fingers into Nick’s ribs. Nick squawks, such a ridiculous sound, really, but Louis, strangely, loves it.

Just like he knows he really fucking loves Nick, and one day, perhaps, he’ll get to actually feel it again. 

" _Yes_ ,” Nick says, almost hissing it. "Might fancy you, you know.”

"Do you really?”

Louis can’t help but bat his eyelashes at him, poking him until he notices.

"Yes,” Nick says again, and then, moving so fast that Louis doesn’t even have time to react, he twists about, cupping Louis’s face in his hands and kissing him.

It’s so sudden and so surprising that his body actually reacts before his mind can, his hands flying out to clench at Nick’s sleeves, and while there's not anything electric, there's no pain and something almost...feathery.

Feathery and soft and Louis isn’t entirely sure he’s breathing.

"I really do,” Nick says, when he pulls away, swiping his thumbs across Louis’s cheekbones and then dropping his hands down to his shoulders. "So don't go, like, forgetting.”

"Oh my god,” Louis says, once it feels like there's air back in his lungs. His ears are on fire, and it’s dizzying, having that back. "You are such a fucking dork.”

Nick stares at him wide-eyed, his cheeks bright pink, and then he gusts out a laugh, winding his arms through Louis’s and pulling him close.

"You are such a one to talk,” he says, resting his chin atop Louis’s head. "Mr Buys-Me-Lip-Balm-So-He-Can-Kiss-It-Off-Me-Later.”

"It was only the once,” Louis says, wrapping his arms around Nick’s waist and resting his head against his chest.

“You said we had to use the entire tube,” Nick returns. "And you made sure we did.”

"That doesn't sound like me at all.”

It’s actually true as true can be.

They’d gone through the entire tube in about a week, not that Louis had ever kept count or anything.

"I have pictures.”

"Lies.”

Except that’s true too.

They’re awkward and cheesy and lame as hell, and there’s at least twenty of them, all on Louis’s mobile except for the one he’d told Nick that he’d graciously let him have.

Nick just hums and keeps holding onto him, and it’s so nice being held that Louis shuts his eyes, not opening them again until he hears Liam shout out an “Oi!”

"No snogging in my mum’s driveway!” he adds, coming up on them with Harry just behind.

"Weren't snogging,” Louis says, his eyes still closed, batting Liam’s hand away when he grabs at his arm and turning to try and bury his face deeper in Nick’s chest.

He likes Nick’s chest.

He’d probably live there if he could.

“My mum wants to see you,” Liam, the insistent bastard, says, pulling at Louis’s arm again. 

And Louis would _really_ like to say something a lot like _I’ll send her a picture, then she can see me all she wants_ , but it’s Karen Payne, and you don't say things like that in reference to Karen Payne. So he, regretfully, lets go of Nick and straightens his shirt, straightening Nick’s too, and lets Liam lead him into the house, where he lets Karen hug him and fuss and make them all a cup of tea.

And he promises her, before they leave, that Harry’s very good people, some of the best of people, and that if he ever wasn't for a minute, then Louis would very gladly punch him in the dick.

~*~

"This isn't Oldham,” Louis says, about an hour or so later, watching trees and fields go by in the late afternoon sun as Harry’s leaving the M6.

"It’s...not,” Harry says, and from the backseat Louis can see him squinting, even though there’s a perfectly good pair of sunglasses holding back his hair. "We, um, decided we’d...make a...stop on the way.”

"Did we?” Louis asks. 

He isn’t expecting Liam to turn around and nod.

"It seemed like the right thing to do,” he says, looking first at Louis and then at Nick. "I’m sorry. We just thought since Harry’s met my folks it’d only be fair to go see his since we’re close enough and then we’d get dinner, yeah?”

“We were supposed to get dinner on the way to Oldham,” Louis says, even though he loves Anne and isn’t fussed at all about stopping to see her. "Promised your mum we’d take you someplace nice since we were stealing you back a day early.”

"Mum’s making cottage pie,” Harry says. "I sent her a...text to let her know, and she said she'd make one. They’re...nice.”

"They're _excellent_ ,” Louis says. Cottage pie is amongst his favourite things, but especially Anne’s cottage pie. "Is she doing peas with it? I like peas with it.”

"I...think so,” Harry says, adding with a glance right back at him, “I told her...you...were coming too.”

And, suddenly, Louis gets it, that look and those nerves. 

_I think...it'd be nice if I just...knew you were there._

_Be wherever you need me to be, Harold._

"Well don’t go getting us killed before we're there,” Louis says, reaching forward and poking at Harry’s shoulder, hard, until he turns around. “I'm _starving_. I want pie and peas. And rum. Is there rum?”

Nick snorts out a laugh, and Harry just shakes his head.

"Is there, Harold?” Louis asks, reaching up and poking him again. "I’m a thirsty, hungry lad, me, and only pie and peas and rum will do. Maybe chips too.”

Harry reaches back and grabs his finger so hard Louis thinks he's gonna break it, but he thinks he’d heard a laugh off of him too, so it's all right.

“No rum for you,” Harry says, and yes, that's definitely amusement in his voice. 

Good.

"You mean all rum for me,” Louis returns, prying his finger out of Harry’s grasp and deciding to poke Nick instead. Nick’s jeans, fortunately for everyone, are ripped at the knee, and that’s where Louis digs his finger in, alternately pulling at loose threads and scratching at his skin.

All Nick does is laugh and turn pink and watch as Louis widens the hole in the fabric until he's got it big enough to stick his entire hand through.

“That’s gonna look lovely at my mum’s,” he says, once Louis’s tested it out several times, and there might have been a time when Louis would have been...upset or fretted about it or something, but that time, it seems, is not this time.

Damn _Lord of the Rings_ films.

They’re still infiltrating his brain.

Except, it is nice, no fear or worry and feeling like he’s fucking Aragorn, so he just shrugs and pats Nick’s knee, saying, "Well at least she’ll know I like you.”

"That would make one of you,” Nick says, grabbing at his hand and squeezing it, his palm damp against Louis’s skin.

_It’s hard going back sometimes but I manage it okay._

So many fucking memories from that damn trip, all of them racing back at once.

"Hey,” he says, flipping his hand over and squeezing Nick’s back. Nick’s eyes are huge and his cheeks are still a bit pink when he looks up. “It’s okay. I'm going to be there too. Kick somebody's arse if I have to.”

"Even my mum’s?”

Louis can’t help but laugh, even if there's a bit of him that sinks at the idea, however false it might be, of Nick needing that too.

“Your mum isn’t going to need it,” he says, shaking his idea to get that stupid thought right out. "And I'm just going to be...I’ll figure out something to make her love me. Sing or something. Dance even though I’ll look like a right idiot and make her laugh at least.”

"She might like that.”

Nick’s smile’s gone wide, and Louis has the sneaking suspicion that his mum wouldn't be the only one liking it.

And, well, in that case…

“Good thing I'm gonna have rum.”

~*~

There is no rum.

Not that Louis really _wanted_ the rum, but it’d been a nice idea, all of them and rum at Harry’s mum’s kinda like they’d talked about.

The shot of Baileys Anne tips into his coffee, however, he might be willing to accept as a substitute.

"Celebrating, aren’t we?” she says, big smile on her face as she’s handing them out after dinner. Harry's face turns several shades of red, and Liam looks like he’s about ready to drop right through the floor.

Louis laughs and holds his cup out for another shot.

"Suppose we are,” he says as Anne’s pouring, saluting Harry and Liam with it, and then holding it to his chest as he’s curling into Nick’s side on the sofa. 

“And not just Harry and Liam there,” she says, looking right at _him,_ and he almost spits out his coffee.

"Um,” he says, very eloquently, and Nick laughs and squeezes his shoulder.

"To be fair, I also...might have been a bit...emotional down the phone to her once,” he says.

"You _cried,_ ” Harry almost shouts, pointing at him, even though his own cheeks are still a rather noticeable shade of pink. "You cried on my _mum_.”

"He said he didn't like house music!” Nick fires back and _oh_.

"Did you really?” Louis asks, tilting his head to get a better look at his face.

"I...might have done,” Nick says. "But it was only, like, a sniffle. Wasn’t full on sobbing or anything, _Harold_.”

"I thought it was quite sweet that he cared so much,” Anne puts in, eyebrows raised at Harry over the lip of her cup as she’s taking a sip. "Especially since it worked out, didn't it?” she adds, moving her cup away and cradling it in her hands. She looks back at Louis, smiling but with this bit of a mum look on her face that he can’t suss out.

It’s odd and it makes him miss his own mum.

And his sisters, but mostly her, and he knows it’d be less shit if _he_ were less shit at remembering to text her back.

She’d even texted him ages ago about taking his sisters skating like he’d promised, and he'd kept forgetting to text her back and set something up, right up to the point where she’d stopped asking.

He doesn't want to think about what she'd had to tell the girls.

He _can't_ think about that.

Instead, he gets out his phone when no one's paying him any attention, the lot of them engrossed in talking about some team that isn't Donny and therefore sucks, and thumbs over to his calendar. Once he's got it, he wedges his coffee in between his thighs and keys himself a reminder for the next day to _text ur mum dammit skating!_ He sets himself several reminders in case one of them doesn’t go off like they’ve been known to do lately and then he clicks his phone off and jams it under his leg before anyone has a chance to notice what he’s been doing and start asking questions.

Thankfully no one does, and he’s loud enough as he’s shouting “Donny or nothing” every time they, but especially Harry, try to say something that he thinks his silence might not even have been noticed.

~*~

"It’s all right,” Louis says sometime later, as they’re all trooping upstairs almost in a line behind Harry and Anne. "I’ve got enough to get us a roo-”

He's cut off by a set of rather identical glares.

Harry really is a lot like his mum.

"If I were Eileen,” Anne says, turning back around, “I’d be a lot happier knowing my son and his friends weren't out on the road late at night trying to get to me. In fact, I’d sleep _wonderfully_ knowing that.”

"But I only just texted he...” Nick says, stopping too at a slight motion of Anne’s head.

"And besides,” she says, like Nick hadn’t even spoken, “plenty of room here.”

She isn't entirely wrong either. 

When Louis had stayed over during first year he’d had a room to himself, a large one better than anything back at his mum’s. He’d hated it, the loneliness of all that space, and as soon as he could, he’d crawled right into bed with Harry, but still, there _had_ been room.

"So you can sort yourselves out however you like,” Anne says, stepping into what looks an awful lot like that very same room and flicking on the lights. "This is the guest room, and Harry's just across the hall there.”

"Whatever you do, though,” she adds, turning around and smoothing a bit of Harry’s hair away from his face, “keep it down, okay?”

Harry’s eyes widen, and Louis thinks he hears Liam make some sort of choking sound.

"I was twenty too, once,” she says, patting Harry’s cheek and then squeezing his shoulder before giving the rest of them a smile and a wave and heading off to her bedroom, the door closing behind her without a sound.

"Oh god,” Liam says, breaking the silence, and when Louis turns to look at him, he’s the palest he’s ever seen him. "I thought you all said she was nice.”

"She is nice,” Nick says, and all Louis can do is nod in agreement.

"She's _terrifying,_ ” Liam says, his eyes huge.

"She liked you though,” Harry says, stepping closer to him and putting his hand on his arm.

"She did?” Liam asks, and while Louis _could_ pop in with an “of course she did,” he rather thinks this is probably more of a Harry and Liam moment, so he very slowly, so Harry and Liam won't notice, starts pushing Nick into the guest room, closing the door behind them and making sure the latch doesn’t click and give them away just yet.

“I think-” Nick starts to says, and Louis hushes him, laying a finger over his lips.

"Liam has supersonic hearing,” he whispers. "He heard me fall in a park once even though he was clear on the other side of it.”

"He did not,” Nick says, and he’s whispering too.

“He did,” Louis says, pushing Nick away from the door and toward the bed in the middle of the room, darting back and clicking off the light. 

"He didn't,” Nick says from somewhere in the dark.

"He did,” Louis hisses back at him, slowly feeling his way over to him, nearly bumping into him and having to grab onto his shirt to keep from tipping over.

“That'd make him a bleedin’ superhero or summat.”

"Yes,” Louis agrees. "Captain Ameridad.”

Nick snorts out a laugh, and Louis takes it as a guide to crash right into him, sending them both toppling backward onto the bed.

“Good thing you have decent aim,” Nick says, sounding almost breathless.

"I have _marvellous_ aim,” Louis says, feeling around until he gets to Nick’s hair and pulling at it so Nick will _keep_ sounding almost breathless. "Your hair’s nice. Wash it or something?”

Nick huffs out a laugh and shifts, holding onto Louis's hips as he’s getting settled. Louis can feel the line of his zip against his bum, and it sets...something alight in him, that coupled with the movement, and all he can think is _really?_ and _thank fuck_ at the very same time.

"I did actually,” Nick says, thankfully oblivious, sliding his hands up until they're resting on Louis’s waist. "This morning. Used your shampoo. You’re out now by the way.”

“I’m...what?”

Louis isn’t sure he’s breathing.

Which, _hello useless lungs. Glad you seem to be back for good._

“You’re out of shampoo,” Nick says, taking his hands off Louis’s waist and putting them on his arms after a bit of fumbling around during which he gets him in the stomach and in the chest. "I liked it, the coconut, so I used it and you’re out now. I'll get you more when we get back.”

_Back._

"Put them back,” he says, not even realising why he's said it until it's already out. 

Nick’s fingers tense.

"Put what back?” he asks. "Your shampoo? Because I will just…”

“No,” Louis says, shaking his head even though Nick can't see him. "Your hands. Put them back where you had them.”

"I don't…”

“On my hips, Nicholas, _god_ ,” Louis says, wrenching Nick’s hands off of his arms and positioning them right where he wants them. He doesn't move his own hands away, just shuts his eyes even though it’s dark and holds Nick’s hands over his hips and forces himself to breathe, very slowly, in and out.

"Are you-”

‘Quiet.”

"Lou, I…”

“Shut _up_ ,” Louis says, through gritted teeth. He thinks he might be sick. "I’m fucking _trying_.”

"Okay,” Nick says, softly, and he’s mercifully quiet as Louis is getting his breathing sorted and swallowing down the lump in his throat. Louis can feel his hands shake a bit, and once he thinks he’s okay, he slides his back and starts to rub at Nick’s with his thumbs.

"Thank you,” he breathes out, once he's got Nick’s hands warm.

"What happened?”

“Felt something.”

It comes out in a mumble but Nick seems to hear it anyway.

"Something?” 

“Say it louder, Nicholas,” Louis says, swallowing again. His voice sounds rough and he hasn’t even been doing anything. “Don't think they heard you in China.”

"I-” is all Nick gets out before the door flies open and the light goes on.

"What are you…” Harry says, stood in the doorway, his eyes wide and his face pale. "Are you seriously...at my _mum’s_?”

“Haz,” Louis chokes out, and he hasn't called Harry that in ages and he hadn't meant to now, but it just sort of slips out of him before he can help it. "Please.”

Harry’s eyes somehow get even wider and his face gets paler, and it's probably not even an instant before he's on the bed with them.

"You too, Li,” Louis says, keeping his eyes on Harry as he’s sliding off of Nick. "Shut the door and hit the lights on your way over, will you?”

“What’s going on?” Liam asks, even as he’s doing as he’d told.

"You remember how,” Louis says, feeling the bed dip and shift as Liam’s climbing into it and reaching out to grab onto...somebody, it really doesn't matter who, although at the same time he thinks he’s got Nick’s belt loop and he’s glad, “how you were all...worried and stuff before you left?”

“Yeah but,” Liam says, “you said you were okay. That I didn't need to go worrying because everything was all right.”

"He was lying,” Harry says, and Louis would have _probably_ put it more delicately, but whatever.

“Thank you, Harold,” he says. "And he’s right, except I didn’t mean to. I just...it really didn't feel like it was worth talking about, and I didn't want you fretting right before you went off to see your mum.”

"Because you would have done,” he adds, right over what he knows is the sound of Liam starting to protest, “and then you’d have put off your trip or something, and I wasn't going to let you do that.”

"I wouldn't-” Liam starts, because he's stubborn, but Louis cuts him off. 

“You would have,” he says, pulling at the belt loop he’s got in his hand. He really hopes it's Nick’s. "But it’d have been...pointless, really, because I...I think I’m gonna be all right, like, really all right, and it’s only been lately and it's only little bits at a time, but…”

_But maybe if I get enough of them, there’ll be enough to last, enough to get by until they're all back._

And that's an idea, isn’t it?

Get enough cracks in that forever wall, and it might just come tumbling down on its own someday.

"But what?” someone says, and their voice is so low that Louis can't tell who it is.

"But I’m going to be all right,” he says, and he reaches over to where he's sure Nick is and fumbles around until he's got his hand, can tell it's his hand by the shape of it and he’s so proud of himself for being able to do that. He squeezes Nick’s hand, hard, and Nick squeezes back. "Maybe not like, today or right this minute or next week or whenever, but I'm going to be.”

_I’m gonna be all right._

It’s amazing how stupidly dizzying a thing like hope can be.

Louis needs to lay down.

He feels along Nick’s arm with his free hand, working his way up to his shoulder and then trying to find where his side is so he can curl into it. He finds it and trails a finger along it, moving across Nick’s stomach next and to his other side, and that’s where he stops, grabbing a fistful of Nick’s shirt and using it to anchor himself as he’s getting situated, having to push Nick back so he can fully stretch out.

"So’s that mean you're going to a doctor or something?” he hears Liam ask as he’s resting his on Nick’s chest and closing his eyes.

Louis makes a face.

"No doctors,” he says, his voice suddenly oddly scratchy. "Tried that once and I didn't like it.”

"So what are you going to do?” Harry asks.

"I actually don't know,” Louis says, holding onto Nick’s waist a bit tighter once he feels Nick’s arms start to go around his shoulders. "Figure that out later I suppose, but I thought you lot should know I’m really going to be all right at least and you don't have to worry so much anymore. Promise. Not lying or anything.”

"You better not be,” he hears Harry say, and he sounds angry, but Louis gets it, so he reaches back and grabs Harry’s ankle, giving it a squeeze before rolling back into Nick’s side.

"I do promise,” he says, and he’s so tired from so much, but he still waits for one of them to say something, anything, but the longer the silence stretches the harder it is fight off sleep.

Eventually Louis just stops trying.

~*~

He wakes up before sunrise, the light in the room grey and everything still.

He’s in the same position he’d fallen asleep in, curled into Nick’s side, and he stays there watching the rise and fall of Nick’s breathing for a very long time before he finally decides to move, sliding out from under Nick’s arm and sitting up. Harry's got a foot in his back, and he has to lean forward and almost crawl over Nick to get out of bed, tumbling over the side and onto his fucking knees, but at least he's managed not to wake anyone up so success, really.

He crawls over to the door and opens it, using the doorknob to pull himself up and then shutting it behind him once he's out in the hall. The bathroom’s not far, thank god, and once he's got that taken care of, he slowly makes his way downstairs and almost mindlessly takes a seat at the kitchen table, folding his arms and resting his chin on them.

"Tea?” Anne asks, almost from out of nowhere since Louis hadn’t seen her when he walked in.

“Please.”

"Milk, no sugar, right?”

“Still me order, yeah.”

“Thought so,” Anne says, and Louis shuts his eyes and listens as she’s making him a cup. He likes it, the sound of the tap going on and off, the click of the kettle and the clatter of the mug being sat on the table in front of him, all of them early morning sounds he doesn’t think he’s heard very much since the last time he was in this same kitchen. 

Definitely not since he’d left his mum’s to go to uni.

Fuck, he really misses his mum.

He opens his eyes and feels at his pockets, finding his mobile in one of them and luckily not smashed, and angles it just behind his teacup, clicking it on and thumbing over to his calendar. He finds the reminders he’d set for himself the day before, and as he’s staring at it a question pops out of him that he’d never, ever meant to ask.

"Pardon?” Anne says, sharply, from the other side of the table. She’s out of focus, but Louis doesn’t look away from his screen.

"I was just wondering,” he says, swallowing and hearing his dry throat click, “if there was...anything you wouldn’t...forgive...Harry for.”

"Did Harry do something?”

“No but...if he did, like if he was...little and he did something that made you...upset, how...how long would you...be...angry with him?”

“Well,” Anne says after a long, long pause, “I suppose it’d depend on what he did.”

"When he was four he painted the cat blue,” she adds, before Louis can say anything. “Got into Gemma’s things and found some leftover spray-on hair colour she’d had from Halloween and he went after Dusty with it. Got it all over the walls and the carpet and himself too before he ran out. Think that's the angriest I’ve ever been with him.”

"Were you cross with him for long?”

He can just barely make out Anne shaking her head.

"Not really,” she says. "He apologised to me and to the cat and then he helped clean it up so I couldn't stay angry with him for very long at all.”

And while Louis can very easily see Harry at four years old apologising to a very disgruntled blue cat, he still has to ask, “What if it was...worse that that?”

He looks up finally and sees Anne looking back at him. She’s frowning, but then her face clears.

"Short of killing someone,” she says, reaching out and patting his arm, “I’d probably forgive him anything, and even then?” She shrugs, sitting back and picking up her teacup. "It’s a funny thing, having a son. They get into so much and they're so rough sometimes but they're the best little guys you’ll ever meet, so sweet and kind, and you just, you never forget that. Not even when they run off to uni and fall in love with a boy and don't tell you until months after.”

She's looking over his shoulder as she’s saying this last bit, and Louis isn’t very surprised to see Harry there behind him when he turns around, his hair a mess and his face red and his arms wrapped so tight around his waist that Louis can see where he's pulling at the fabric of his shirt, bits of fabric bunched up in his fists.

“‘M not in love,” he mumbles. "And I didn't...want you to be...excited if things didn't...work out.”

"Three months Harold,” Anne says, rising out of her seat, her chair scraping against the tile, and ruffling Harry’s hair as she's passing him.

"Dunno. Could be worse,” Louis says before Harry can really say anything, reaching out and tugging one of his arms away from his waist, pulling harder when Harry tries to resist. “Nick met my family at a funeral.”

"He didn't,” Anne says, and her eyes are wide as she’s turning away from the kettle.

Louis nods.

"Your poor mum,” she says, turning on the tap and sticking the kettle underneath. "Imagine that wasn't easy for her.”

"It was all right,” Louis says. "Nick's charming at least. My sisters _loved_ him.”

"He's a good one, that Nicholas,” Anne says, and all Louis can do is agree.

"Think I'm gonna go see how he feels about waking up,” he says, scooting his chair back and grabbing his mobile and his teacup, saluting Anne with it and heading toward the stairs. "Thank you for, well, everything.”

Anne smiles at him, patting his shoulder as he’s passing by, and he’s halfway up the stairs when he stops and clicks his mobile on, thumbing over to the calendar and staring at his reminders again.

 _Short of killing someone_ Anne’d said, and Louis would like to believe she wasn't just talking about herself, that his mum would be the same way, and yet…

And yet…

And...yet...fuck it.

He pulls up his mum’s number and presses call before he can talk himself out of it.

She answers on third ring, and Louis hears her mutter a _shit_ right as there's a muffled sound of the phone being dropped before she's back on with a breathless-sounding “Lou?”

“Mum?”

It comes out more watery and wobbly than he’d like.

“Lou?” she says again, and there's an edge to her voice that sounds a lot like worry. "It’s not even seven yet. Are you okay?”

“I'm fine,” he says after a minute, making himself smile so she might hear that and not the wobbling. "I didn’t mean to wake you or anything but I was up and...I’m in Holmes Chapel and I thought…”

“I’m on the way to work,” she says after he trails off, and at least she's gone from sounding worried to sounding confused. "What are you doing in Holmes Chapel?”

“Harry’s mum lives here,” he says, glancing toward the kitchen and then slowly inching his way upstairs. "We, um, decided, a few of us, well Harry and Liam really, that we’d stop here on the way to Oldham and I was wondering if...if it's not too late or anything maybe I could come by, take the girls to the Dome or something, sort of like I’d said.”

"Of course it's not too late” his mum actually sounds offended now “and they’d love that. But why are you going to Oldham?”

Louis releases a breath he didn't know he’d been holding and it comes out sounding like a laugh.

"Meeting Nick’s parents believe it or not.”

"Are you really?”

“Yeah,” Louis says, coming up on the guest bedroom and nudging the door open with his toe. Liam’s not in sight, which is fine really, and Nick’s still sleeping, curled up on his side with one arm thrown across his face. Louis sets his teacup down on a nearby table and takes a seat on the bed, squeezing into the bit of space between Nick’s back and the edge. "He asked if I would since we're not far and all.”

"That’s wonderful, Lou. They’re going to love you. I know it.”

"I hope so,” Louis says, even though he’s actually not all that nervous about it. At least not yet. He finds a loose thread sticking out of Nick’s collar and starts pulling. "Nick said his mum’s mum-like.”

His mum laughs.

"We usually are,” she says. "And it’s going to be fine. Don't you worry.”

"Thanks Mum.” Nick shifts, but Louis doesn’t let go of the thread in his hands. "I'll text you when we're done. Let you know when to expect us and stuff.”

"I’d like that,” she says. "Love you.”

"Love you too,” Louis says and then the clicks his mobile off and sets it beside his teacup, hoping she somehow managed to hear the _so much_ that he _didn't_ say. He picks his teacup back up and cradles it to his chest, nearly dropping it when Nick's head is very suddenly resting on his leg, his eyes still shut and his arm resting across Louis’s knees.

"Time is it?” he asks, sleep-slow and every bit as lovely in early morning light as he is in afternoon light.

He's just really fucking lovely, and Louis probably isn't ever going to get over that.

"Don't know,” he says, running his hand through Nick’s hair, smoothing bits of it off his forehead. It feels nice on his fingers, still so soft that it's almost slippery, and so Louis, figuring he’s allowed, just keeps at it. "Mum said it wasn't seven yet.”

“Mum?” Nick asks, blinking his eyes open and immediately rubbing at them.

"Yeah,” Louis says. "My mum. Talked to her just now.”

"Everything all right?”

“Yeah.” Louis really thinks it is, at least right now. "Told her we’d come see her after we’re done at yours, take the girls to the Dome.”

"Skating?”

Nick’s still blinking his eyes and rubbing at them like they hurt.

“Yeah,” Louis says again, bending over as best he can to get a better look at Nick’s face. "Are you all right?”

“Contacts,” Nick says, waving his hand about and almost hitting Louis in the face. Louis takes his hand and holds it. "Just need some eye drops or summat. It’ll be fine.”

"I’ll see if Anne’s got some,” Louis says, and he’s just set his teacup back on the table and started to climb out of bed when Nick, whose hand he’s still been holding, tightens his grip on his fingers and pulls him back down.

"In a minute,” he says, shutting his eyes and resting his head back where he’d had it on Louis’s leg.

And that's nice and all, but, “If you need eye drops Nicholas, then you need them now.”

He tries getting up again, only to be pulled right back down again.

"In a _minute_ ,” Nick says, turning his head so more of his face is buried in Louis’s thigh. "You can buy me all the eye drops in Holmes Chapel in a bit but just...give me a minute, okay?”

“Okay,” Louis says, because what else is he going to say, and he makes himself comfortable, winding his free hand back into Nick’s hair. "So do you really know how to skate?”

Nick laughs, and Louis looks down in time to see him crack open one eye.

"I do,” he says, and his cheeks get oddly pink. "I'm not like, an expert or anything, but I do all right.”

"Think if you can stay upright then you're doing better than me.”

"You can't skate?”

Louis shakes his head.

"Never was much for falling arse over tit where everyone could see me,” he says, combing Nick’s hair away from his forehead again, only for it to flop right back down to where it was. “At least not when it wasn't on purpose.”

"I’d hold your hand.”

“Would you?”

Louis’s ears are strangely warm.

Nick nods.

"Of course,” he says, swiping his thumb across the back of Louis’s hand that he’s still got a grip on, awkward as it may be. "Can't have my boyfriend falling everywhere, getting himself hurt, can I?”

Louis laughs and keeps combing at Nick’s hair.

“Think that’d make you a terrible boyfriend, yeah.”

Nick turns his head and Louis can see more of his smile.

“I’m an excellent boyfriend.”

Louis hums and shakes his hand free of Nick’s grasp, moving it to cup his cheek before he can take it back again and then swiping his thumb up the line of his jaw.

“You’ll do I suppose.”

Nick laughs and he lets Louis move so that they’re lying down facing each other, Louis’s hand still on Nick’s cheek. He slides his hand up Louis’s side, and it’s firm enough, his touch, that Louis’s shirt gets rucked up a bit, but Louis isn’t thinking about that so much as he’s thinking about how warm Nick is when he pulls him close and how soft his lips are and gentle and how he’s pulling away after about a second or two and how that just won’t do.

It won’t do, and Louis wouldn’t describe it as frantic or anything, the way they crash together when he pulls Nick back in, wouldn’t describe it as much of anything really except the need, that much he knows at least, to feel Nick’s lips against his own again and again and again.

It’s need, and he can start with that.

~*~

“Liam.”

Liam doesn’t respond.

“Leeyum.”

Still nothing.

Louis kicks the back of Liam’s seat.

“ _Leeeeeeyum_.”

“I’m not supposed to talk to you,” Liam says, reaching around and trying to grab Louis’s foot.

“I said I was sorry,” Louis says, moving his foot out of reach and kicking Liam’s seat again but this time not quite so hard. “I just...I got carried away, all right? Wasn’t thinking.”

“You weren’t thinking,” Harry says, turning his attention away from the road to glare at him. “My mum hadn’t even left yet.”

“She did think it was funny though,” Nick says, taking Louis’s hand and squeezing it. Louis looks over at him and the smile on his face is worth the reaming he’s been getting pretty much ever since Harry and Liam and Anne had walked in on the two of them thirty minutes or so ago. “Said she was glad we were...getting on.”

Harry snorts out a laugh, and Louis sees him clap a hand over his mouth.

“Both hands on the wheel there Harold,” he says, because he can’t help that either, and Harry shoots him another look, but it’s more amused than angry. "Unless you plan on stopping somewhere like the very nice lad you are so I can steal one of Payno’s shirts and not show up at my boyfriend's mum’s in yesterday's clothes.”

"He's already used my deodorant,” Liam puts in helpfully.

"Everyone used your deodorant,” Harry says, even as he’s starting to slow down and putting the indicator on. "No one else had any.”

"The hair gel was nice too,” Nick says. "Don't think my mum would recognise me if my hair was flat. She’d probably be calling the cops on me or summat if I showed up like that.”

"You're probably right,” Louis says, unfastening his seatbelt once Harry’s got the car stopped and twisting around to get at Liam’s suitcase. "Flat hair’s a _crime_.”

"Yours is flat,” Nick says, all indignant and poking him hard in the hip. Louis bats at his hands, and he stops, only to start poking at his leg as he’s bending almost in half over the back seat and unzipping Liam’s suitcase.

"And I look fantastic,” Louis says, kicking back at him at the same time as he’s trying to find something that isn't either a plain white tee or a check shirt. He hates check shirts unless they're on Nick, although he does go back through the discard pile and pull out a dark blue one, draping it neatly over Nick’s head. "Anyone else want a shirt?” he calls out, finally deciding on a white henley and tossing it down into his seat. "Got some nice white ones.”

"I do,” Harry says at the same time as Liam mutters something about accessories. 

"I know you like accessories Liam,” Louis says, tossing a white t-shirt at Harry’s head and then lobbing another one at Liam. "I could pay on my car loan with your watch.”

“It’s a nice watch.”

"No one's denying that,” Louis says, and he can feel his hair start to stick up as he’s pulling his shirt off. He suddenly wishes he had a hat to put over it, but it’s summer and he’d probably melt and he hates feeling melty and sticky and sweaty. "Just said I could sell it if I wanted and have enough to make a loan payment or two.”

“But it was my present,” Liam says, and Louis can’t _see_ him as he’s pulling the henley over his head but he can feel his pout. “I got it for myself for finishing sixth form.”

“Liam,” Louis says, once he’s got his top sorted.

“What?”

Yes, definitely pouting.

“I’m not stealing your watch.” Louis reaches over the seat and ruffles Liam’s hair. “Gonna steal your shirt and more deodorant and probably your socks but never your watch.”

“He is terrible for stealing your socks,” Nick puts in.

"That is true,” Louis says, wiggling his toes around in Nick’s very comfy socks and trying to decide if they really do need changing or not. "Except not Liam’s socks. They’re boring, they are. All...white.”

"I wore pink ones once.”

"Because they matched the shirt you had on, didn't they?” Louis asks, reaching forward to flick at a bit of Liam’s hair again and then sliding his feet back into his shoes, figuring if he keeps them on, then his socks won't need changing after all. "And you know I don't actually care, right? You want to go around looking like you're in GQ or summat then that's your business isn’t it?”

“I suppose it is.”

"Of course it is,” Louis says, with a swift kick at Liam’s seat. "Don't be absurd.”

“I’m not being absurd. I’m just…”

“Just what?” Louis says when Liam stops talking, and he looks up from where he’s just bent over to tie his shoelaces in time to see Harry pull his shirt off over his head and _oh_.

Well then.

“You’re just all right what you are,” he says, going back to his shoes. “Harold thinks so. Don’t you Harold?”

“I do think so,” Harry says. “And so does my mum.”

“There you go then Li. All sorted,” Louis says, and he thinks he hears Liam squeak out a “really?” as he’s finishing with his laces and bounding over into Nick’s side of the backseat.

“Hello,” Nick says, his hands his hands hanging mid-air and his shirt only secured by a single button.

Louis, of course, undoes it.

Nick laughs and his cheeks get pink.

“They are going to kill us, you know that right?” he says, even as he’s making no move to fix his shirt. “Like actually murder us and leave us in a bog or someplace where we’ll never be found.” 

Louis looks back at the front seat and, seeing Harry and Liam bent in close to each other and absolutely not paying him any mind, crawls further into Nick’s lap.

“Don’t think I care much right now, Nicholas,” he says, tugging at Nick’s undone shirt. He _doesn’t_ care and for the moment it’s wonderful. “This is crooked.” 

“Well I’d straighten it but you know…” Nick says, looking down at where Louis is very much sitting on at least half of his shirt and then back up. “Can’t really get to it, can I?”

“Nope,” Louis says, and he stays right where he is, letting more of his weight rest on Nick’s legs. 

“You’re not going to let me get to it, are you?”

“Nope,” Louis says again, leaning in, getting close enough that their lips are only an inch or so apart and then, after a second or two, pulling back and starting to do up Nick’s buttons.

“You...fucking tease,” Nick says, a bit breathlessly, and Louis laughs.

“ _Language_ , Nicholas,” Louis says, pulling on the button he’s got in his hand. He doesn’t even know why he’d done it, but it’d felt right and actually felt _good_ , and he thinks he’d like to do it again sometime. 

He hopes, part of that stupid, dizzying hope he supposes, that he’s _able_ to do it again sometime.

Because he doesn’t really worry about Nick leaving him so much anymore, the past month wherein Nick’s barely been to his own flat a pretty strong indication that he isn’t going anywhere or at least isn’t fussed about Louis keeping him at his, but he worries, if worry is even the right word for it, that he’ll let him slip away, like so much sand between his fingers, and that he won’t even notice it until Nick’s long gone.

“Think we ought to steal this one more often for you,” he says, loud enough to try and silence that thought but just loud enough for Nick to hear and even then mostly to his navel. 

"Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Louis says, finishing with Nick’s buttons, leaving half of them undone like he likes, and then running his hands over Nick’s chest to smooth out the creases in the fabric. Not that there really are any, but he likes the way Nick feels under his fingers, his skin warm under the cool linen. "It’s nice on you, the blue.”

"Gonna wear it every day now,” Nick says, and Louis lifts his head just enough to see the smile curving his lips. It makes him feel better, and he didn't even know he needed it.

"With your pants and socks,” he says, tweaking Nick’s collar and then resting his hands on his chest, spreading his fingers out so he can touch more.

"And my nice coat.”

"Definitely the nice coat, yeah.”

“But I still don’t get my trousers.”

Louis laughs and shakes his head.

“No,” he says pressing his fingertips into Nick’s chest and then dragging them down toward his stomach. “You don’t.”

“Not even in winter.”

Louis hums and trails his fingers back up.

“Maybe winter,” he says, concentrating on the movement of his hands. "If you're good.”

Nick huffs out a laugh.

"Am I going to know if I’ve been good?” he asks, lightly resting his hands on Louis’s hips and then tightening his grip when Louis sort of wriggles into it. "Or do I have to guess?”

“Don’t know,” Louis says with a shrug. "Although I’d hate seeing you cold or for your legs to freeze off or summat so I might be nice and drop you hints.”

Nick smiles at that, and Louis is just about to lean in and actually kiss him when he hears, very clearly and definitely from Harry’s direction, “You know, whenever you're finished, we could, like, go.”

Louis twists around so fast that he almost falls out of Nick’s lap, and if it wasn't for Nick holding onto him, then he probably would have done.

“Sorry,” he says, feeling oddly caught out and climbing off of Nick. "I…”

“Got carried away, we know,” Harry says, and Louis can see him shaking his head as he’s sliding back into his own seat. "I’m starting to think locking them in a cupboard wasn't a bad idea,” he adds with a look at Liam, who just nods.

"Like the two of you wouldn’t,” Louis says, tossing his dirty shirt at Harry’s head. He's of a good mind to send one of his shoes after it, but he still isn’t sure of the state of his socks so he has to, regretfully, leave them on. 

"How do you know we haven't?” Harry asks, sending Louis’s shirt back at him.

"I don't,” Louis says, tossing the shirt behind him and then stretching his leg over Nick’s to prod at Harry’s seat. "When?”

“That’s none of your concern,” Harry says, and Louis is just about to prod at his seat again when he adds, “But it was that time I told you about. We thought we got locked in but we hadn't.”

"Oh yeah.” Louis remembers now. “Last week of term. I thought it was some kind of emergency and we rushed over there and the door wasn't locked at all. Can't believe I forgot about that.” 

Well, actually, he can, but...nevermind.

"Can't believe you did either,” Liam puts in. "You were on about it for a week.”

"Wasn’t on about it for a week,” Louis says, even though he probably was. “And if I _had_ been, then maybe I was just happy my mum and dad were happy, yeah?”

“‘M not really your dad,” Liam says, and Harry laughs.

"It’s all right,” he says, reaching over and patting Liam’s arm. "I have stories.”

"Stories?” Liam asks.

"Yes,” Harry says, with a look back at Louis. "Stories.”

Louis narrows his eyes at him.

"What kind of stories?”

“Interesting ones,” Harry says, smiling almost serenely, “to tell Eileen.”

He hears what sounds like a gasp out of Nick and so he asks again, surprisingly calm, “What kind of stories?”

“Interesting ones,” Harry says again.

Louis is about ready to hit him.

"What kind of interesting ones?”

Harry reaches back and pats his knee.

"Don't worry,” he says, with that same stupid smile on his face. "She’ll like them, I'm sure.”

"What _kind_?”

Harry just pats his knee again and turns around to start the car. 

~*~

"And then he went and bought an entire shelf worth of Pot Noodle because Nick wanted some, and in the _rain_.”

Louis isn’t going to hit Harry.

He is going to _kill_ him.

"I'm sure she doesn't need to know that, Harold,” he says, and he can feel something almost vibrating in his chest. If he didn't know better he’d still say it's his long-lost heart.

"Well I thought it was quite nice of you, _Lewis_ ,” Harry says, turning back to Eileen. "Don't you think so?”

“I do,” Eileen says with a nod and looking right at Louis.

Louis can feel himself shrink back, and he just hopes it isn't completely obvious.

And it’s not that he doesn’t like Nick’s mum or that she's scary or anything. She’s really quite the opposite, seeming almost nervous and eager to please, and Louis _really_ gets that, but he still can’t help but want to hover behind Nick, clinging on to his hand and soaking up the warmth.

Not that that makes things easier, really. They’d been squeezing the life out of each other's hands as they were stood on the doorstep waiting for her or someone to open the door, and it’d been the first thing she'd seemed to notice as the door had swung wide.

She’d almost looked like she wanted to cry.

He’s actually fairly certain he’d heard a sniffle out of her once Nick introduced him as “my Louis.”

And she still seems a bit overwhelmed, even now.

“Nicholas,” Louis hisses, poking him in the side once Eileen’s turned her attention back to Harry. "Let's go make some more tea or something.”

"Okay,” Nick whispers, and it’s not until they’ve managed to sneak off into the kitchen that Louis feels like he might be able to breathe again, letting out a great big sigh as he’s collapsing into a chair at the kitchen table.

“Okay?”

Louis nods and props an elbow on the table, resting his head in his hand and closing his eyes.

"I think she likes you,” he hears Nick say, just audible over the sound of rattling tea things. 

Louis can’t help but huff out a laugh.

"I thought she was gonna cry.”

Nick laughs.

"I thought so too,” he says, and his cheeks are a bit pink when Louis cracks open an eye to look at him. "Means she's happy though. Because of...well, you know.”

"Yeah,” Louis says, opening his other eye and staring at the floor. The tile in Eileen’s kitchen is yellow and white, and he starts drawing squares on it with the toe of his shoe. "Does he…does he still live around here?”

Nick’s quiet for a very long time before he says, his voice low, “Don’t know.”

"Don't much care either,” he adds, and Louis looks up in time to see him looking back. "Because it’s better, you know, with you here.”

That weird vibrating’s back in his chest.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Nick says, flushing deeper and going back to making tea. “You did say you’d kick someone's arse if they needed it.”

Louis laughs.

"I did,” he says. "But especially that guy. His fucking friends too. Don't even care how many of them there are.”

"Gonna start a fight with all of Oldham, are you?”

Louis shrugs and resumes dragging his toe across the tile.

"If I need to.”

"Mum’d probably love you forever for that.”

"Not going to do it for her.”

Nick gets quiet, and the silence stretches until Louis is able to hear the distant chirp and whistle of birdsong.

Always with the singing, the birds.

And he sits there and listens to it, his head still propped up on his hand, and it’s nice even if the bird’s a bit of a noisy little fucker, so nice that he almost jumps when Nick sets a cup of tea down by his elbow.

"Sorry,” Nick says, setting his own cup down and taking a seat next to him. He slides his chair closer to Louis’s, so close that their knees bump into each other, and reaches over for Louis’s free hand, squeezing it and saying, "Thanks.”

"For, you know, coming and, uh, threatening bodily harm to my hometown,” he adds, when Louis looks up at him.

"Wasn’t to everyone,” Louis says, squeezing Nick’s hand back. "Just to whoever needed it.”

"I know,” Nick says, and his smile is soft. "But still, thanks.”

"Anytime,” Louis says, smiling back at him. He shuts his eyes when Nick leans in and presses a kiss to his lips, light and soft and sort of feathery, and it almost seems to linger long after Nick’s pulled away and picked up his teacup, long after Louis has picked up his own.

And they stay there, pressed together as best they can be with a table corner between them, drinking their tea in the late morning silence.

Louis thinks it's something he really could get used to.

~*~

Eileen sends them off about an hour or so later with a hug and a wobbly sort of “thank you” whispered into Louis’s ear along with a tin of biscuits that Nick swears up and down she’d never made for _him._

"In fact I don't think you’ve ever made biscuits for _anyone_ , ever,” he says, and Eileen shushes him, giving Louis a pat on the shoulder and telling him to come back whenever he likes.

"Think I might,” he says, saluting her with the tin. "Helpless against a biscuit, me.”

Eileen laughs, and Nick pulls her into a hug, his grip so tight that Louis can see the creases in her shirt sleeve.

It makes him want his mum.

So much so that when Nick's getting his door for him and asking him if he’s ready to go home, his immediate thought isn’t of Exeter but of her, and all he can say is, without a bit of hesitation, “Yes.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a heads up that there is a good deal of disordered thinking in this chapter, up to and including suicidal thoughts and a vague reference to a plan.

The skating rink at the Dome is absurdly crowded.

Not that Louis expected it _not_ to be, it's a Sunday afternoon in the middle of the hottest fucking summer ever, but it’s _so_ crowded that he can barely make anyone out.

Anyone, that is, except for Nick, who’s tall enough for Louis to keep track of as he’s crossing the ice with Phoebe clutching one hand and Daisy the other.

They pass by, close to the edge, and seeing the three of them is doing all sorts of things to his insides that he didn't even know were possible. At least not possible for _him_.

"They're a bit in love with him, I think,” his mum says from where she's sat beside him, clutching a cup of coffee and watching with him as Nick tries twirling Phoebe and Daisy at the same time. His arms are long enough and they're small enough that it actually works, and Louis doesn’t think he’s ever going to forget the way their faces light up under their matching hats as Nick’s twirling them again and again.

He isn’t going to forget the brightness of Nick’s smile.

He doesn't think he ever could, but he gets his mobile out and takes a picture of them anyway, just so he'll have it.

"And I also don't think they're the only ones,” his mum adds, while he’s staring down at his screen, expanding the picture until all he can see is Nick.

Louis laughs, and he can feel his cheeks getting warm.

"No idea what you're on about,” he says, looking away from his screen and over at her. Her eyes are almost sparkling. "His hair’s terrible and he listens to wanky house music and he’s always putting too much milk in me tea. Not in love with him at _all_.”

His mum laughs and shakes her head.

"Such a pity,” she says, turning her attention back to the ice. "I liked him.”

"Yeah,” Louis says, glancing down at his phone one more time and then back at the ice as well. “Might still keep him though. You never know, might be redeemable.”

“Might be,” his mum agrees. "How’d it go with his mum?”

“Went all right. She made me biscuits, lemon ones. We had them for lunch.”

His mum tuts, but Louis isn’t actually bothered.

The biscuits had been _excellent._

"Think I have fish fingers in,” his mum says. "Could do you lot a sandwich when we're through here.”

_Before you go._

She doesn't say it, but Louis still hears it.

He shuffles closer to her and puts his head on her shoulder. She’s warm, and her coat smells like the same washing powder he remembers from when he was little, something that came in a big purple box and tried its best to smell like lavender.

The memory almost aches.

"That'd be great,” he says, swallowing down the lump that's still managed to work its way into his throat. "Haven’t had a proper one in ages.”

"Nick hasn't made you one?”

“He tried. Wasn’t the same though. Not enough butter.”

His mum laughs.

"You always were the worst for butter,” she says. "If it wasn't running off your fingers after you smashed the sandwich down then you wouldn’t eat it until I put more on.”

"And you’d do it?” 

“Of course I would,” his mum says, shifting and resting a tentative hand on his shoulder. "Your nan was always saying I shouldn't because it’d just make you spoiled, but I was so happy you’d even eat at all that I've had probably put the entire tub on if you’d asked.”

Louis doesn’t remember that.

"Was I bad for not eating?” he asks, shifting himself until his mum has to either tighten her grip or let go.

“You could be,” she says, choosing the former option, and he’s so grateful for it. "Especially when you were very small.”

"How small?”

He thinks his voice cracks.

He’s sure his mum heard it.

Because everything seems suddenly very still and far away, and she feels almost like a statue beside him.

Her arm is tense across his back.

And it stays that way, everything suspended, until she drops her hand and starts rubbing at his back.

"Five, love,” she says, and he can just as suddenly hear the noise of the crowd again. "You were five and you wouldn’t eat unless it was a jam tart or a fish finger sandwich drowned in butter, and I’d let you because I thought you'd starve otherwise.”

Louis doesn’t remember that either.

"How long was I like that?”

“Months,” his mum says, still rubbing his back. "Started in...September I think, not long before you turned six and I’d just got to the point where I was thinking of seeing a specialist when you came up to me on your birthday and told me you wanted blue cake because one of your friends had it and it looked good.”

Louis can’t help but laugh.

He doesn't remember that, of course, but it does sound like him.

"Did I get my blue cake?”

“What do you think?” his mum returns, and he can hear the laughter in her voice too.

“I think I had it and it was a mess.”

"I think you’d be right about that,” she says, still sounding amused. "Was finding blue cake crumbs for _weeks_. Even got into my handbag somehow.”

"I probably wanted you to have cake at work.”

"You probably did.” She moves her hand back to his shoulder and squeezes it. "Was always finding things in my handbag. Usually was your toys, though, those little cars.”

"Probably thought you could share them with the babies.”

"Probably,” his mum says, and then she's quiet, her hand eventually falling away as he’s sitting back up.

“Did you ever see him?”

It’s abrupt, but he has to know.

“See who?”

Louis looks down at his mobile and then out at the ice. Nick and the twins aren't anywhere in sight.

"You know who.”

Out of the corner of his eye he can see as his mum’s face almost turns to stone.

"No,” she says, voice tight. 

"And it was a good thing I didn't,” she adds, after a very, very long stretch of silence. "Because I’d have killed him.”

Louis turns to look at her. She’s looking back, and she's never looked so...fierce.

It’s almost frightening.

"Would you?”

“Yes.”

It comes out sounding like a hiss.

"And I still would. Even now,” she says, turning her attention back to the ice and picking up her coffee cup, holding it almost to her nose. Her hands, Louis notices, are red and chapped, and they shouldn't be because it's summer. 

He wishes he could make it better, but he doesn’t know what to do.

So he just glances down at his mobile, clicking it back on and bringing the picture of Nick and the twins up again. He stares at it for a very long time before he's able to squeak out a “thanks.”

"I didn’t...think you would,” he adds, seeing his mum start out of the corner of his eye. "Thought you'd be too angry…”

“Angry?”

Louis nods.

"With me.”

His heart, he _knows_ it’s his heart, is about to beat out of his chest.

He can't breathe and his limbs feel like glass and his muscles feel so heavy that it probably wouldn't take very much for him to crumple to pieces. His head’s spinning, and he thinks he might be sick.

And yet, in the midst of all of that, he's still able to hear, very clearly, “I would _never_.”

She grabs his chin and forces him to look at her.

"I would never,” she says again, looking him right in the eye, “ _ever_ blame you for what _he_ did, okay? I don't know what happened that night and I don’t know why he left and I don’t care to know why, because _he_ _left_ and he left you _alone_ and you...you just don't…you don't hurt my best friend.”

She looks like she's started to cry, her eyelashes wet and her cheeks flushed and her chin wobbling. She lets go of him, looking away and biting her lip, and Louis can't have that, nothing is ever worse than her being upset, so he reaches forward and pulls her into a hug, resting his cheek in her hair.

"S’all right,” he says, and his head's clear enough now for him to think it might actually be true. "He was an arse.”

Louis hears a sniffle.

"He really was.”

"Fuck him.”

He hears a watery laugh.

"Yeah,” his mum says, sitting back and wiping at her eyes. “Fuck him.”

She takes his hand and squeezes it, smiling at him, and then they sit there, in silence, watching the skaters pass by.

~*~

Afternoon Skate is almost over when Nick comes up to the two of them, biting his lip and hiding one hand behind his back.

"Seem to be missing a couple of small people there, Nicholas.”

Nick flushes and glances over at Louis’s mum before looking back at him.

"They're, um,” he says, reaching up and pulling at his hair, “with Fizzy and Lottie. Twirling or something.”

"Seeing as how you appear to have swapped coats with Fizz,” Louis says, taking in the pale pink bomber jacket Nick’s got on with sleeves ending halfway down his forearms, “Might be inclined to believe you didn't go losing my baby sisters.”

"I wouldn't,” Nick says, glancing at Louis’s mum again. "And she was cold and I'm lovely in pink.”

"You are that,” Louis says, and his mum laughs as Nick flushes even harder.

" _Anyway_ ,” he says, slowly moving his hand out from behind his back. "Thought it was...time.”

"Time?” Louis asks.

Nick nods and, still moving slowly, lowers a pair of skates right into Louis’s lap.

Louis just stares at them.

"No fucking way,” he says, after about a minute. “I’m not doing that.”

"Just one turn before they close it for lessons,” Nick says, glancing back at the crowd on the ice that’s already started to thin and then at Louis. “I’ll hold your hand like I said. Won’t let you fall or anything. Promise.”

"Don't think I could say no to an offer like that,” his mum puts in, nudging him a bit in the side, and _fine._

“If you let go of me even for a second…” he says, stepping on the heels of his shoes and then toeing them off, “I’m not going to forgive you. Ever.”

"I won't,” Nick says, already kneeling down, taking one of the skates and sliding it onto Louis's foot. He does the same with the other one, getting Louis all nice and sorted with his skates laced tight, and before Louis knows it, before he can even back out, he’s on the ice.

He hates it immediately.

"I hate this,” he says, holding onto the railing with one hand and maintaining a death grip on Nick’s hand with the other. He’s wobbling all over the place and he’s sure his feet are going to come out from under him any second now and he _hates_ it. "I’m going to fall.”

 _And they'll all see_ _and then they’ll laugh_.

"You're not,” Nick says, squeezing his hand so hard it makes his fingers almost hurt. “Or if you do I’m going down too, all right?”

Louis nods and makes himself breathe, concentrating on his feet.

"I haven't done this since Year Six,” he says, trying to match his movements to Nick’s. It’s rather effective at calming his nerves, although he can still feel his hands shaking ever so slightly, despite the grip Nick’s still got on one of them. 

"I used to pretend I was Johnny Weir,” Nick says, and Louis can't help but laugh.

It comes out a little wheezy and breathless, but it’s still a laugh.

"Did you really?”

“Oh yes,” Nick says, and his cheeks are a bit pink when Louis looks up at him. "Didn’t get to skate much, but when I did, I’d pretend like I was him.”

“I can see you as Johnny Weir.”

"Can you?”

Nick sounds impossibly excited.

Louis likes that.

"I can,” he says, squeezing his hand and looking away from their feet. "He had that one outfit with all the cut-outs, the black one. Can easily see you in that, especially if you had your hair all up.”

"Flat hair’s a crime,” Nick says, and Louis laughs.

"On you I think it is.”

"Unless it's wet, like when I was in the rain.”

"Suppose that’d be all right. Extenuating circumstances,” Louis says, letting go of Nick’s hand to wrap his arm around his waist. He wobbles a bit in the process, but he doesn’t fall, thank fuck, and he’s so much more secure under Nick’s arm that it doesn't take very long at all for that icy spike of adrenaline to fade away.

He squeezes Nick’s waist harder, and Nick squeezes his shoulder back just as firmly.

They don't really talk after that, just skate along in silence, clinging to each other and moving so slowly on Louis’s account that he starts to feel like an old man or something, but it’s still good, the way his muscles burn as he’s trying to match the movement of his legs to Nick’s and how warm Nick is at his side. He’s so fucking warm and Louis loves him and he's so glad he's here with him, not at the end of all things, thank you very fucking much _Lord of the Rings_ , but at what feels an awful lot like the beginning of things. Louis doesn’t even know what those things even are, but they feel shiny and new and like they’re actually in his grasp, like they're close enough to the touch, so close that he could actually reach them and not have them slip away.

"I talked with my mum,” he says, once they’re halfway around the rink. "About my dad.”

"You told her?”

“No,” Louis says, shaking his head. "I don't think that matters anymore, her knowing the specifics or whatever. Wouldn’t change anything.”

"But she said she wasn't angry with me,” he adds, because that’s the most important thing, and he almost needs to say it out loud just for his own benefit. “She said she hadn't seen him after and it was good that she didn't because she’d have killed him. She said I…” he feels the slightest prick of tears in his eyes but then it’s gone “she said I was her best friend and you don't hurt her best friend.”

"No,” Nick says, his voice as soft as his grip is tight, “you don't.”

"I want to go somewhere else before we leave today,” Louis says, and the idea’s only just occurred to him, but it’s already desperately important. "Think I just need to see it one more time, see if it's like I remembered it.”

"It probably isn't,” Nick says, his voice still low. "They never really are. All faded-like, you know?”

“Yeah, but I still need to see it, just once,” Louis says, straightening up and moving out from under Nick’s arm, taking his hand again before he even has a chance to wobble. "Still might not be back for a while.”

"I understand,” Nick says, and Louis really believes that he does. "I won't tell the others.”

"Thank you,” Louis says, and then, after a minute or two, he starts pulling on Nick’s hand, adding, “Pull me along you majestic creature. My legs are tired.”

Nick laughs, a bright, loud, lovely thing, and does as he’s told.

~*~

It’s still blue.

Not the pale blue that Louis remembers it being, but a dark blue, so dark it's almost black, and the trim on the windows is a brilliant white, brighter than it's probably ever been. The roof’s red, a bright, almost poppy-red, and the grass is so green and well-kept that it makes him feel like he's looking at an almost entirely different place, a place where only good things happen and never the bad.

 _Bad things happen in happy houses too_ , he thinks, stood out on the pavement with his hands jammed in his pockets and the wind playing in his hair. _Terrible things, doesn't matter what the house looks like_.

And yet, he’s glad _this_ house looks like it’s got a second chance, that it got to be remade into something bright and lovely, no matter what’d happened to it or in it in the past. He doesn't think he’d have been able to bear it if it’d been a dilapidated heap when he’d driven up on it after leaving his mum’s, still full from the butter-soaked fish finger sandwich she’d made just for him and the warmth of her smile, from how hard she'd hugged him and how hard he’d hugged her back.

 _Second chances all over the place,_ he thinks, taking one last look at the house and then climbing back into the Renault. _Maybe even for me._

“You never did say what this place is,” Harry says, once he's put the key in the ignition and turned it.

"It’s nothing,” Louis says, glancing back at him and then at Nick, reaching over and squeezing his arm. Nick takes his hand and twines their fingers together, squeezing once and then letting go.

He puts the car in gear and turns his attention to the road.

"It’s just a house.”

~*~

"We’re lost.”

"We are not lost, _Leeyum_ ,” Louis says. "That sign we just passed very clearly said we are in the Upper Derwent Valley. It _welcomed_ us to the Upper Derwent Valley.”

"I saw that,” Liam says. He sounds rather put out about it. "But why are we in the Upper Derwent Valley? I thought we were going home.”

"Because it’s lovely,” Louis returns, gesturing at the trees covering the surrounding hills, their leaves beginning to go dark in the setting sun. "And I fancied seeing it so here we are.”

"Since when are you into nature?” Harry asks.

"Since when do you care?” Louis retorts, finding a small gravel car park near the water and pulling into it. 

“Since I'm being dragged into it,” Harry says, and Louis shoots him a look before pulling the key out of the ignition and throwing his door open. 

“I’ve dragged you into worse,” he says, remembering their disaster of a road trip from March. "And you didn't complain then, so stop doing it now, go find a tree, and snog your boyfriend under it. I know you want to.”

"You don’t…” Harry begins, but Louis doesn’t stick around to hear the rest of that sentence, just shuts the door behind himself, pockets his keys, and starts toward the water.

Nick catches up with him near the edge, taking a seat beside him where he's flopped down onto the grass, his arms and legs stretched out at all angles and his face turned to the sky. He's probably getting grass stains all over Liam’s nice white shirt, but at the moment he really doesn't care.

"I’m tired,” he says, sliding over a little so Nick’s seated between his arm and hisside. "It’s been a long fucking couple of days.”

"They’ve been good days, I think,” Nick says, and Louis can't exactly argue with that so he just curls his arm around Nick and moves sideways so his head's resting on his leg. Nick’s hand slides into his hair as he’s looking at the water, dark blue and barely moving, and at the light of the sunset hitting the trees beyond.

"It was a good idea, wasn't it?”

“It was.”

"Better than in March.”

"March wasn't so bad.”

"It was the worst.”

"It wasn't.”

"I mean,” Nick adds, after a moment, “would have been nice if your nan hadn’t died, but it wasn't...terrible or anything like you're thinking. We were together, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Louis says, because he can’t argue with that either. "You giant sap.”

Nick laughs, and Louis turns his head so he can look at him. Nick’s looking back at him, his smile going soft, and it’s so nice, especially with evening coming on and the rustle of the leaves and the slight trickling sound of the water.

It almost feels like being in a story, like something out of Tolkien, and Louis doesn’t think he’s ever felt that in his life, and certainly not with, or on account of, someone else.

It ought to be frightening, and maybe at one time it would have been, but it really, really isn’t. 

_I really do love you_ , he thinks, rolling over onto his back again and pressing his thumb to Nick’s lip. And while his heart’s not fit to burst over the idea, it's okay, because he can’t sense the wall either, which, it could be back in Exeter and he’ll have to deal with it there whether he likes it or not, but for now at least he's content, centred and settled-like, and he’s not at all interested in overthinking it to the point that it scatters.

"We never did dye your hair,” he says instead, dragging his thumb down Nick’s chin and then up the line of his jaw.

"Got distracted and forgot probably,” Nick says, and Louis doesn't doubt that for a second.

"Did you still want to do it?” he asks, because again, not thinking, and Nick shrugs.

"Might as well,” he says. "I am lovely in pink.”

Louis laughs.

"You are that,” he says, sitting up and poking some of Nick’s hair back into place. It isn’t as soft as it was earlier, and Louis hates to imagine what his own is like, but he keeps at it anyway. "Thought you'd be keeping Fizzy’s jacket you seemed to like it so.”

"Was tight in the shoulders,” Nick says, shutting his eyes as Louis is playing with his hair, and Louis leans in closer so he can see his eyelashes better in the fading light, because for as much as he says Nick’s a giant dork of a sap, he knows he's even worse. “But I did like it, you are right about that. Think I want one for my birthday.”

"I’d get you one,” Louis says, and fuck, Nick’s birthday is soon isn’t it? He’s going to have to put a note in his phone as soon as he can. "But I don't know if you’d want to be seen in something from Primark.”

"Wouldn’t bother me really, long as it's pink,” Nick says, and Louis’s eyes drop down to his mouth. It’s so stupidly nice, and since it hasn't hurt in a while, kissing him, Louis leans in and does just that, soft at first and then harder because Nick feels _good_ and they're in a story, so why the fuck not?

It hits him that he’d like a picture of it, all that dark blue and green and the hint of orange from the sunset lighting up Nick’s face, and he’s never been much for painting, but he suddenly wishes it was something he could do, capture that moment and make it bright so that even if he manages to forget he can look at it and remember that it was real, that it happened to him and wasn't wishful thinking.

As it is, a picture on his phone will have to do.

“What-?” Nick starts to say, obviously having felt Louis shifting as he’s trying to get at his mobile, but Louis just shushes him with another kiss and keeps digging in his pockets until he finds it. He pulls it out and breaks away from Nick enough to get it angled properly, and then, before Nick can really do anything, he's shutting his eyes and diving back in, holding onto Nick’s head with one hand and his phone with the other and filling his camera roll with pictures that are probably all horribly blurry from his hand shaking and underlit and not at all looking like what they're supposed to be.

But they're his at least. He knows that much.

And he's just about to put the phone down when he feels Nick’s hand on the other end of it, and he’s expecting it to get yanked out of his hand, but all Nick does is hold it still, and so Louis, figuring it's allowed, keeps taking pictures until his hand starts to cramp.

"Think you ought to put one of them on Instagram,” Nick says, later, when they’re looking through them, the light from Louis’s mobile illuminating his slightly swollen lips.

"Instagram’s for manky hipsters,” Louis says, even as he’s pulling the app up. He’s had Instagram forever actually, but it’s mostly something he uses to follow football players and the odd interior design account, having decided ages ago that posting about himself was ultimately meaningless, because who really fucking cares about what he’s had for breakfast or his tea or what the fuck ever, and therefore not something he was at all interested in doing. 

He might make an exception for Nick, though, which is why he finds himself selecting the least grainy of the pictures and posting it, not even bothering to pick a filter or caption it or anything.

He’s just put his mobile away when he hears the unmistakable sound of a notification that definitely isn't his.

“Seriously?” he asks, standing up and pulling Nick along with him.

"Shut up,” Nick says, and Louis can't help but laugh. 

"Keeping up with me are you?”

“ _No_ ,” Nick says, and Louis laughs even harder as he’s looping his arm around Nick’s waist. "Could be Kanye having a Twitter meltdown for all we know.”

"That’s true,” Louis says, steering them back toward the car. He’s got no idea what time it is, but he’s sure it’s long after sunset and that they ought to be finding Harry and Liam before Liam has kittens or something. “Except your phone's only gone off the once hasn’t it?”

“Could be a text. Harry and Liam saying they're taking the car and leaving us.”

"Oh shit they would,” Louis says, letting go of Nick's waist and grabbing his hand and then half pulling him the rest of the way up the hill to the car park. His leg muscles are burning, and he’s really going to feel it in the morning, but he’ll be fucked if he's spending the night sleeping in the grass.

Luckily for everyone, but especially for Liam and Harry, the Renault’s right where he’d parked it, and Harry's leaned against the driver's side door with his arms crossed and looking entirely too smug in the light shining down on him from an overhead lamp.

"Something amusing, Harold?” Louis pants out, letting go of Nick’s hand and just barely restraining from bending over to clutch at his knees.

"No,” Harry says, with a slow shake of his head. He taps his mobile against his arm, and _oh_.

"Does everyone have fucking notifications on for me?” he asks, pushing Harry aside and throwing the door open.

“Maybe if you posted more often it wouldn't be an...event when you did,” Harry says with a shrug right before he shuts Louis’s door. 

_I'm not that fucking interesting_ , Louis wants to shout, because he really isn’t and the idea that people might think he is is simply...mind-boggling, but he's also very much not in the mood for hearing otherwise at the moment, doesn’t at _all_ want to sound like he’s asking for pity, so he just waits for Nick to climb into the passenger seat and then he starts the car.

It’s not until they're back on the motorway that he feels calm enough to reach back and punch Harry in the knee, demanding that he find him a place that's going to sell him hair dye at close to midnight.

"After all,” he adds, sneaking a glance at Nick, it’s not good sneaking because Nick’s looking back at him with a big smile on his face, but whatever, “Nicholas and I have a project.”

~*~

They don't actually end up dyeing Nick’s hair for another two weeks.

They’re not very good weeks.

Louis spends most of them curled into a ball somewhere, sometimes in bed under the duvet and sometimes on his bedroom floor also under the duvet but usually in the bathroom, like he is right now, with the door locked and his back up against it, the fan running so no one’ll be able to hear him.

Because he can't stop crying.

And he cries about _everything_.

He cries about his nan and his mum and from the stress of not knowing what the fuck he's supposed to do with himself after he gets his degree even though that's still a year away and from how he feels too much and how it won't _stop_ and from how nothing he ever tries works because he's been so numb for so long that he almost doesn’t even know who he is sometimes.

He doesn’t know who he is or what he likes or what he doesn’t or where the fuck he's going, just that he’s a sad, lost little shit who can't keep his eyes dry.

And he _hates_ it.

He hates it hates it hates it, and he hates himself.

 _Get a fucking grip_ , he tells himself for the millionth time that afternoon, wiping furiously at his eyes. He’d like to punch something he’s so angry, but that’d make noise and then Liam or Harry or Nick or all three of them would come running, like they had the last time he’d forgotten and done it anyway, and Louis doesn’t want to have to lie to them again. Nick had said he’d scared the shit out of him, and it was all Louis could do to keep the smile on his face as he’d promised that he’d just slipped, no big deal, nothing worth worrying about at all, he was _fine_. Nick probably hadn’t believed him, and Louis wouldn’t have blamed him because slipping sounds nothing at all like someone's fist hitting tile eight times, four times for each hand, but he hadn’t said anything, and the pain had felt so nice that Louis still really only regrets getting caught and then having to lie about it.

He hasn’t punched a wall or tile or anything since then, hasn't had a chance, but he really, really wants to.

“Lou?”

Speaking of missed chances…

“Louis.”

Nick’s hand’s rattling the doorknob.

"You said we'd do my hair today.”

Fuck.

He had said that, earlier, when he’d sneaked out of his room to grab another one of those mint chocolate protein bars of Harry’s that are the only thing he can really taste anymore, and Nick had been there, doing the washing up again because Louis is useless and can't ever summon the energy to do it himself like he should, like it's his fucking _share_.

He scrubs at his eyes again, wiping the damp off on his jeans as he’s standing up, and then, very slowly, unlocks and opens the door. Nick’s on the other side of course, and he almost looks surprised, like he hadn't expected Louis to open the door at all, but he recovers quickly enough, smiling at him and then sliding past, the carrier bag from Blue Banana that's been collecting dust on Louis’s desk for the past two weeks in one hand.

"So we bleach it first, yeah?” he says, setting the bag down near the sink and nudging it a little with his forefinger. "And then you can make me pink.”

"And then I can make you pink.”

His voice sounds terrible, scratchy and thick and hoarse, and he knows Nick noticed, given the way his shoulders suddenly slump.

Louis thinks he'd even heard a sigh.

He steps back toward the open door and wraps his arms around his waist, digging his fingers in and pulling at his shirt.

“We're gonna need towels,” Nick continues, after a moment. His voice is almost too loud. “Not, like, nice ones, but ones you won't mind getting messed up. Aimee says bleach is a pain in the arse and it’s terrible for getting everywhere.”

"She also suggested we take off our clothes so they don't get ruined,” he adds, looking up at Louis again, and the smile’s back on his face like it’d never left. "Said I’d suggest it, see what you thought.”

"Did she…” Louis can’t fucking breathe “really say that?”

“She did,” Nick says, turning to face him fully and then taking a step closer. He takes a couple more and stops right before their toes touch. "But we don't have to, of course. Old shirt ought to do all right.”

"I don't have anything I want to get bleach on.”

It’s out of his mouth before he can help it.

And he feels sick and dizzy from the sheer implication of what he’s just said, and yet, he wouldn't take it back.

"Me neither,” Nick says, his smile getting wider. "Although I might find myself after with a pink chest hair or summat and I don’t know if I’m really that dedicated to making it all match.”

"Please God no.”

Louis sniffles and Nick laughs, coming even closer and pulling him into a hug.

“Think that shirt with the ripped sleeves is around here somewhere,” he says, rubbing Louis’s back, and Louis can't help but sink further into his chest. “Probably look all punk rock with the rips and the dye and stuff.”

"Probably” is all Louis can say, and even that’s muffled by his face in Nick’s shirt and the congestion still making his voice thick.

"I’ll go find it and you can be getting me a towel, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Louis says, unfolding his arms and wrapping them around Nick’s waist, squeezing once before letting him go. He can feel Nick’s eyes on him as he’s dropping down and digging underneath the sink for a towel, but he just...can't look at him right now, so he concentrates on his rummaging, and by the time he's finally found a ratty green one that still somehow smells clean, Nick’s already back, dressed in a horribly wrinkled t-shirt with its sleeves ripped off.

“It was under the bed,” he says, skirting around Louis where he’s still kneeling on the floor. “Thought I was gonna be in Narnia before I found it, but then I did near some books and a crisp packet. Also found a tenner under there so cheers.”

He hands Louis the note as he’s standing back up, and Louis simply shoves it in his pocket, because surprise money is one thing, but Nick stood there talking about his hovel of a room like it’s nothing is something completely different. And he doesn’t know what to do with that, so he just sets the towel down in the sink and watches as Nick starts unloading the bag, pulling out the bleach kit and then a vibrantly pink jar of hair dye.

"Pinkissimo,” he says, in a lousy Italian accent, and then switching over to something that's an equally horrid French accent, “is good with ze cheese, yes?”

It’s not until he starts making faces at him, pursing his lips and widening his eyes in what looks like a terrible approximation of Blue Steel, that Louis finally picks the towel back up and swats him with it, saying, "You're horrible. Go sit down.”

"You love me,” Nick says, as he’s doing as he’s told, taking a seat on the edge of the tub and sticking his legs out, and Louis does and he feels better and because why the fuck not, he just shrugs and pulls his shirt off, tossing it at Nick and then going over to him, bleach kit in one hand and hair dye in the other.

"God knows why but I do,” he says, and he doesn’t miss the way Nick’s eyes light up as he’s setting the dye down by his left hip and then prying the bleach kit open.

“I’m clever and handsome,” he hears Nick say. “And I love you too.”

Louis drops the bleach kit box, watching as it lands right on his foot.

“Got kinda tired of the more than a bit or just a bit or we do thing,” Nick continues when he looks up at him. He bites his lip and then goes on, “So I thought I’d just tell you so you know and that way there's not like...a question of it or whatever.”

“Or whatever.”

Nick nods, and his face breaks into a smile. It’s so...nervous-looking, like he’s afraid Louis is going to change his mind, again, which is impossible because Louis might not know himself all that well anymore, but he does know that he’s stupid over his Nicholas.

 _That_ at least is something that's never changed and he can finally feel it after what feels like an eternity without it and he’s so damn...grateful that he basically just kicks the box off his feet and launches himself at Nick, tripping a bit over his legs but eventually landing like he’d aimed to, with both arms around Nick’s neck and holding him tight.

"You're an idiot,” he tells him, feeling his arms going around his back. Nick gusts out a laugh, and Louis can feel it in his hair. "A right proper idiot if you think I’d ever stop.”

"People do.”

"Yeah,” Louis admits. "But I’m not most people, am I?”

“No,” Nick says, with a small shake of his head. "You really are not that.”

"So don't you go forgetting,” Louis says, and while he would really love nothing more than to spend the rest of the day, the rest of his life if he’s honest, just like this, with Nick’s arms warmand sure across his bare back and his cheek pressed into his hair, he’s dyeing Nick’s hair today regardless of how he feels about himself. 

Because he loves Nick and doesn't want him to worry and because he really does want to see him with bright pink hair.

"Are you ready to be pink?” he asks, after he’s given himself another moment to enjoy Nick’s warmth.

"Yeah,” Nick says, although it comes out a little breathless.

"Excellent,” Louis says, pulling away and cupping his cheeks. He plants a kiss on Nick’s lips and then stands up, swiping the bleach kit box from the floor and adding, “Let’s make you pink.”

~*~

"Aimee’s right,” he says, about an hour later, looking down at his bleach-stained jeans in dismay. "This stuff’s a pain in the arse.”

"At least the bleach is done.”

"That is true,” Louis says, peeling off his gloves and throwing them in the sink before pulling on another pair and then picking up the hair dye. "And none of it got in your eyes, so that's a win.”

"Would hate to be blind, yeah,” Nick says, with a slight nod of his head. "Wouldn’t get to look at you anymore.”

Louis almost drops the jar of dye. 

He’s of half a mind to throw it in Nick’s face.

Well maybe not in his face but definitely in his general direction.

"That is…” he says instead, opening the jar and pouring half of it into a bowl, “possibly the lamest thing I’ve ever heard and I live with Harry Styles.”

He goes digging in the bag for the tint brush and, once he finds it, starts dragging it through the dye, mixing the colour even though he doesn’t have to just so he can hide his burning face for just a bit. His ears he can't do anything about, but his face at least he can hide for a moment or two.

"It’s true though,” he hears Nick say. “Be sad if I didn't get to look at you anymore. Or kiss you. Or stuff.”

"Blind people still kiss, Nicholas,” he says, keeping his head down as he’s walking over to where Nick’s still sitting on the edge of the tub and climbing in behind him. He positions himself right at Nick’s back and then, taking a deep breath he didn't know he’d needed, he picks up the brush and starts applying dye to Nick’s hair.

"I know that,” Nick says. "But I like looking at whoever I’m kissing and I like looking at you and I’m not going to apologise for it.”

He sounds a bit...tetchy.

Louis tells him so, and he just shrugs.

"Isn't a crime,” he mutters, and Louis can't do anything but laugh.

"It’s all right you know,” he says, leaning in for a better look. There is absolutely no way he is messing this up. “It’s just that no one's ever been this much of dork for me before, yeah? Not sure I'm used to it.”

"Should be used to it,” Nick says, still sounding grumpy. Louis pokes him in the shoulder with the clean end of his brush.

"Stop that,” he says, going back to his work, finishing up the back and throwing one leg over the side of the tub so he can start on the side of Nick’s head. "I mean,” he adds, once he's finished, moving back around to Nick’s other side and starting in on it, “you put up with my shit. Think you’re doing all right with that all on its own.”

Nick’s quiet for a very long time and then he says, so softly that it's almost a whisper, “I don’t mind.”

"I’ve got this friend, right?” he says, looking up at him when Louis stops. His eyes are impossibly wide, and his cheeks have a very, very faint tinge of pink to them. "Her name's Mairead, and she's...older, married, got a kid, everything. I don't even remember how we met but she's always telling me how things are with her husband and they're, like, these terribly cheesy things you only see in films or something, and I just...I never knew I wanted that too until I had it and I don’t...I don't ever want it to go away. “

He turns his head back toward the door and looks down, studying his hands resting in his lap.

“So it's not,” he says, after a minute, “putting up with your shit so much as it's me wanting you to be as happy as I am. Because I know you're not, and I just...want to make it better for you, however I can.”

Everything goes still.

Even his thoughts feel sluggish, like he can actually feel them churning very slowly in his head.

"How do you...know I’m not?”

“Because I can see,” Nick says, looking back toward him and very pointedly pulling at the waistband hanging low on Louis’s hips. Louis can feel everything in him start to turn to stone. “Even before we went on our trip I thought you might not be, just little things here and there like the sleeping all the time, but since we got back it's like, I don't know, you're in this slump or something, and I try helping out, doing your share of things so you don't have to worry so much about them and I try being distracting and loud like you like, but I don't know if any of that’s actually _doing_ anything.”

"I still try though,” he adds, letting go of Louis’s waistband and letting his hand fall back down to his lap. “And I’m not gonna stop unless you ask me to.”

He smiles then, so soft and kind, and Louis could cry.

His heart’s kicked free, about to beat out of his chest, and he can't breathe and he could cry.

And he does, not a lot, not much more than a couple of tears rolling down his cheeks before he sniffles and wipes them away with his arm.

"I’m not going to ask you to stop,” he says, his voice gone back thick as a couple more tears sneak out. He goes to wipe them away, but Nick beats him to it. “Thank you.”

"Does it help?” he asks, his palm cupping Louis’s cheek.

Louis nods as best he can without dislodging Nick’s hand.

He takes a deep breath. It comes out sounding a bit ragged.

"You have no idea.”

Nick’s face lights up, and Louis isn’t ever going to get tired of seeing that.

Never ever ever.

"Okay,” Nick says, swiping his thumb across Louis’s cheek and then letting his hand drop again. 

"Okay,” Louis echoes, because just...okay. He’s okay, he really is, and he’s going to stay okay even if it kills him, which, it might not even come to that, so long as he’s got his Nicholas like he thinks he just might.

He taps at Nick’s chin with the brush, and once Nick’s turned his head, he goes back to work on his hair, applying the dye in silence until he's absolutely sure every single strand is covered.

~*~

"That is...very pink.”

"Is it too pink, do you think?”

“Sick rhyme there, Nicholas. And no, it's...nice actually. Suits you.”

"Do you really?” Nick asks, still looking between his phone with the camera on and the mirror.

"When have you ever known me to not say what I mean?”

“I’ve known you to not say things when you should,” Nick says, and he might _possibly_ be right.

But Louis lets it pass, saying, "Wouldn’t lie about your hair though.” He reaches up and runs his hand through it. It’s soft, and so, so pink. "Massive fan of it, I am. Want it looking nice.”

"Unless it's raining.”

"Yes, Nicholas, unless it's raining,” he says, and he can't help but roll his eyes. He pulls at Nick’s hair some more and then scoops up Nick’s hair gel that's been sitting by the sink, untwisting the cap, and getting a good amount on his hands, rubbing them together and then attempting to replicate Nick’s quiff. And it isn't lost on him as he’s working, dragging it out as long as possible because he really, really does love Nick’s hair and how he’s allowed to play with it sometimes, that Nick’s hair gel’s been sitting by Louis’s sink for weeks and weeks now and how that's his toothbrush sitting in a cup beside Louis's own, how it’s been there for weeks and weeks too and how neither of them had said anything the first time Louis had dropped it into that cup and declared it Nick’s.

He wonders, and not for the first time, what Nick would say if he asked him to move in.

But he doesn't ask, because it's too much, especially today, and he knows it is, despite how badly he wants it, so he files it away for another time and keeps working at Nick’s hair until the gel’s threatening to dry on his fingers.

"Think you’re as nice as I can make you,” he says, stepping back and wiping his hands off on his jeans, scrubbing hard to get the gel off.

“I dunno,” Nick says, picking his phone back up and turning the camera on again, “think it looks all right, actually.”

He looks like he’s about to take a picture of it when Louis stops him with a hand on his wrist.

"I'm doing that,” he says, and he almost takes Nick’s mobile when he decides that he’d rather use his own, so he darts out of the bathroom and into the bedroom to retrieve it, nearly dropping it a couple of times on his way back but managing to keep a grip on it. He positions himself in front of Nick and swats his arm to the side, pulling up his camera with his stupidly shaking hands and aiming it right at Nick’s face.

"Instagram?” Nick asks, once Louis has a few, peeking over the top of his screen as he’s studying the pictures and trying to decide which one he’s going to be cheesy enough to set as his background.

"S’for twats,” Louis says, even though he’s already thumbing his way over to the app and bringing it up. He isn’t able to get the entire picture posted, so he settles for his favourite part, Nick’s eyes and his eyebrows and his hair, foregoing the filter because Nick really doesn’t need one, sticking a cherry blossom emoji in because he can’t think of a caption, and then posting it before he's had time to second-guess himself.

He still laughs when he hears the notification sound on Nick’s phone.

“Come along, you,” he says, pocketing his mobile and slinging his arm around Nick’s waist. 

"Let's go show everyone how good a job I did.”

~*~

By the time Nick’s birthday rolls around, about a week and a half after Louis’s masterpiece of a dye job, Louis has spent _so_ much time crying that he’s actually begun to wonder just how much it’d hurt to rip his eyes right out of his head. 

Because in _addition_ to crying from stress and from frustration and from the sheer exhaustion that comes from living with himself, he cries about absolutely everything else, up to and including the plate of burnt pancakes currently looking back at him.

He’d thought, stupidly, that he’d do Nick his breakfast on his birthday, and since the only things Nick actually had at his were good for making pancakes, he’d decided that that's what he’d try his hand at, figuring they couldn't possibly be that hard.

He was so very wrong.

Because they're burnt, and he doesn’t even know how to begin to describe their shape.

“Can I come out now?” he hears Nick ask from where he’s been barred from leaving his bedroom. "I think I saw smoke.”

"No,” Louis shouts back at him, and his voice is so thick and watery that there's no point in trying to hide it, so he just...doesn’t.

"Right,” he hears Nick say, and then there's the creak of bedsprings and not long after that Nick’s in the kitchen with him, his shirt wrinkled and askew and his hair still uncombed. He’s a mess, really, and he’s lovely and Louis never wants to stop looking at him.

But his own face is red and his eyes are swollen and he can't bear for Nick to see him like that, so he looks away, burying his face in his hands and scrubbing at it, willing himself to _calm the fuck down_. It doesn't work, gets worse actually, and he’s just started to choke on his own breathing when Nick's hand lands on his shoulder and then he's pulling him close. Louis doesn’t really want to go, doesn't deserve it, but he also isn’t given much of a choice.

"I hate this shit,” he says, once his head lands on Nick’s chest and Nick’s arms go around his shoulders. "It won't fucking stop.”

"I know,” Nick says, resting his chin atop Louis’s head and starting to rub his back.

"I cry at fucking everything,” Louis says, and he can't really breathe, but he keeps talking anyway. "I’ve even got this list, _weird shit that Louis cries about_ , and I’m putting something on it every fucking day and I'm so fucking tired of it. I just want it to _stop_.”

That is all he wants.

He doesn't want the wall back, no matter how tempting the idea is, but he’s felt so much and all at once that those pills in his drawer get more and more enticing all the time. He’s even got so far that he’s managed to work out just how to take them to finally put himself to sleep for good, and if he’s honest, the only reason he hasn't gone through with it yet, the main reason at least, is that stupid, dizzying hope that still clings to him, insisting that things are going to be okay.

 _When?_ he always shouts back at it, _when the fuck will things be okay? When the fuck will I be okay?_

But it never answers and Louis will find himself in spare moments sat on the floor with the pill bottle in his hand, staring at the label and not seeing it. And invariably someone will come in and he’ll have to shove the bottle back where it goes, and sometimes if he’s very lucky he’s even able to forget it's there, albeit never for very long.

"I just want it to fucking stop,” he says again, and Nick presses a kiss into his hair before resting his cheek there.

“It will,” he says, as his hold gets tighter. "It’s going to.”

"How?”

It’s so watery-sounding still, and broken, and Louis _hates_ it.

"Because...it can't...always be bad, I don't think,” Nick half-mumbles. "I don't think...it works that way.”

"Think what works that way?”

“Everything.”

He doesn’t elaborate, so Louis has to ask, "What do you mean, everything?”

“Just...everything,” Nick says, and Louis can feel his slight shrug. "Life, maybe, I dunno, but I was talking with Harry one day, and it got me thinking…” 

“That’s dangerous,” Louis says, automatically, surprising himself, and Nick snorts out a laugh.

"Yeah, well, it happened,” he says. "And Harold’s good, like, to talk to about stuff with sometimes, help sort things out, and we were talking about cycles and how things can't ever stay the same, and later I was thinking about myself and what happened with me and how it was bad for a while and I didn't think I was going to find someone good and then I found you.”

"And you were terrible at first,” he adds, while Louis is still trying to sort out whether he's on fire or icy cold, “like, properly terrible, especially when you, well, forgot, but then you didn't do it again and things have been really good since and I don’t care if you believe it or not because it's true. And I think things are going to get better for you too like they did for me. I mean, the wall’s down apparently, and that’s got to be a good thing.”

"I hate it,” Louis says, but there isn't really any force behind his words. He’s just tired, so tired, mainly of himself, and all he wants is to go to sleep for a million years and then wake up as someone, anyone, else.

"Yeah,” Nick says. "Imagine it's got to be annoying, all that at once.”

"It’s the fucking worst.”

"But you’re going to get through it. I know you are.”

"How do you know?”

“Because…” Nick says, and then he pauses for a very long time, eventually saying, "because things aren't always bad and because you're a lot stronger than you think you are. You’re not going to let something else win. Poke along through sheer determination, you will.”

"How do you know?” Louis asks again.

There’s another long pause, and then Nick says, “Because you're still here.”

Louis is cold.

So cold that he shivers and he can feel the panic welling up as he’s wondering if Nick actually _knows_ , as if he wasn't careful enough, letting something slip, and Nick somehow figured it out, that last-ditch plan of his that _no one_ was supposed to know about until after he’d already gone through with it.

Because the wall might be gone, and he can live, for lack of a better word, without it, but the plan, _that_ is absolutely his and his alone, and he doesn’t know what he’d do if it got taken away too.

“That’s strong itself, being here,” Nick continues, and Louis doesn’t know if he ought to be relieved or still terrified. "So the other stuff, that's gonna come easy, I think.”

"I don't…” Louis begins, but he’s cut off by Nick letting go of him and then taking his face in his hands.

"It. Will,” he says, forcing Louis to look at him. His eyes are wide and his hands are shaking a bit. "Because you're a strong, stubborn little arse, and you're not going to let whatever you're thinking be right about you.”

Louis can’t help but choke out a laugh as the words sink in.

“You’ve always got to be right,” Nick says, smiling and visibly relieved, swiping his thumbs across Louis’s wet cheekbones. He hadn't even realised that he’d still been crying. "Doesn’t matter what it is.”

There’s a thought that runs through him, cold and spiky, suggesting that maybe his plan’s right, and it stops his heart and his breathing and it makes him want to shiver again and be sick all at once.

But from somewhere else there is...the horror of the idea of what Nick's face would look like after he’s been missing for too long, after he...finally washes up on shore. And then Harry and Liam and his sisters and his _mum._

Fuck, he can’t do that to her.

He...just not yet.

Maybe later there’ll be a time when he really can't take it anymore, the inside of his head, but for now, at least, he is going to fucking _try_ to put himself back together again. It might kill him and it might not, but goddammit if he isn't going to do all he can first.

Because Nick’s right.

He _is_ stubborn at the very least, and he can't ever seem to shake his stupid optimism, and _perhaps_ it’s worth listening to it and ignoring the bad bits for as long as he’s able.

"Yeah,” he says, and he has to make himself smile, but it’s okay. “But only because I'm always right.”

"Told you so,” Nick says, his smile growing wider. "Now…” he adds, letting go of Louis’s face and stepping back just a bit, “what’s this wonderful smell that's taken over my kitchen?”

“It’s supposed to be pancakes,” Louis says with a sniff, wiping his nose with his sleeve once Nick’s looking at the mess on his countertops and not at him. "You didn’t have anything else in.”

"I’m surprised I even had that to be honest,” Nick says, and Louis can tell when he spots the the pancakes because his smile suddenly goes soft and then he's picking up the plate. "They're shaped like little fish.”

“They’re not meant to be.”

"Are you sure?” Nick asks, looking back down at the plate. "I like fish. They’re...sea creatures.”

It takes Louis about a minute to get the reference, and when he does, it's all he can do not to jump back into Nick’s arms and punch him and hold him tight at the very same time.

As it is, he just shakes his head, making sure Nick sees it, and starts rummaging in the fridge to see if he can scrounge up a bit of lemon. He finds a bottle of lemon juice that doesn't smell absolutely terrible and pushes it into Nick’s hand as he starts on his quest for the sugar. 

"You really are a _massive_ dork, you know that right?” he says, finding the sugar at last in a cupboard over the cooker, having had to climb up onto said cooker in order to reach it.

"I’ve been reliably informed of that, yes,” Nick says from right behind him, his hand on Louis’s back to keep him steady.

"And you remembered,” Louis says, passing him the sugar and then grabbing hold of his shoulder so he can turn himself around. "Good lad.”

"Best lad,” Nick says, once Louis has turned about and had himself a seat. He's high enough that they’re at eye-level with each other if he bends forward just a bit, and Louis really, really likes it, so he plants his hands on each side of his legs and leans forward some more, getting close enough that he could count Nick’s eyelashes if he wanted.

And he might want. They are really nice eyelashes, always have been, and Louis lets himself look for a good, long time at them and then at Nick’s face in general (also always nice) before he sits back and pronounces, very grandly, “You’ll do.”

Nick laughs and wraps him right up into another hug, and Louis can hear sugar scattering everywhere behind him, but he doesn’t care and he doesn’t mention it.

"Happy birthday,” he says instead, low and right into Nick’s ear, adding after a pause, “sorry about your kitchen.”

"S’all right,” Nick says, rubbing his back. "Never been made pancakes before. Ought to be an adventure.”

"An adventure in food poisoning,” Louis says, and Nick laughs.

"Isn't,” he says, letting go of Louis and then offering him his hand to help him down. "And if it is, then you'll just nurse me, like I did you.”

And Louis would, no question of that, so he just shrugs and says, "Probably, yeah.”

"And you’d be, like, amazing at it, I'm sure,” Nick continues, coming up and standing beside him where he's frowning back down at the pancakes again. "Proper professional and everything.”

Louis can feel himself turn red, because he would try his fucking best and as much as he loves praise and attention, now is one of those times where he can't quite take it, so he picks the plate up and shoves it into Nick’s hands, saying, with his head still down, “Eat your pancakes, Nicholas.”

And, after a too-long discussion involving the merits of documenting one’s life online accompanied by a bit of sugar recovery which results in said pancakes being “proudly” posted to Louis’s Instagram, Nick does eat them, saying that they're the best he’s ever had.

Louis knows he’s lying, they can’t possibly be good given how burnt they are, but he allows himself to appreciate it anyway.

He is, after all, going to try.

Starting now. 


	4. Chapter 4

It turns out to be hard fucking work, putting himself back together.

And it starts almost by accident.

He’s cleaning out under his bed one random miserable Tuesday not long after Nick’s birthday, figuring it's as good a place as any to start and also in case of more surprise money, when he comes across a copy of a book he hasn't seen in at least a couple of years. All it takes is a glimpse at the title and an idle flip through for him to spend the rest of the day and all night on the floor surrounded by protein bar wrappers and rereading _Luck in the Shadows_ as fast as he can. He finishes sometime around dawn, and he’s so exhausted, the last time he’d stayed up all night reading just for the sheer hell of it having been when the last Harry Potter book had come out years and years ago, but he's...happy.

Genuinely happy, because he hadn't realised just how much he’d missed Alec and Seregil and how badly he’d wanted them to get together until he was back in their world. And although he knows full well that they _do_ get together eventually and that they stick together through so, so much, the only other thing crossing his mind as he’s setting the book down and stretching his arms is that he has to find the rest of the series and start in on it right away.

He's back under the bed with the torch from his mobile on when he hears a rustling up above him and a very sleepy-sounding “What are you doing?”

He hits his head on the bed frame as he’s working his way back out, muttering a _shit_ and rubbing the spot that got the worst of it, and when he gets up on his knees and peers over the edge of the bed, Nick’s looking back at him. His eyes are half-open and kinda squinty, and his hair’s falling across his forehead, looking almost peach-coloured instead of pink in the early morning light. He's as lovely as he always is, and Louis doesn’t hesitate to reach out and touch him, having to really stretch in order to reach him and trailing a finger along his cheekbone when he does.

"Looking for a book,” he says, moving farther up on the bed so that he’s half hanging off of it. His book search can wait a few minutes. "Found this one under my bed that I used to love, and I finished it so I was gonna see if the rest of the books were under there as well.”

"The rest of them?”

Louis nods and climbs fully into bed, draping himself over Nick’s shoulder, winding his hand into Nick’s hair and pressing their cheeks together. Nick’s warm and scratchy, and Louis’s book search might be kept waiting for more than a couple of minutes.

"Yeah,” he says, starting to rub at Nick’s scalp. "It’s a series. _Nightrunner._ I read it for the first time years ago and I’m thinking I want to read it again.”

"That good?”

Louis nods against Nick’s warm, scratchy cheek.

"Had magic, spies, and boys kissing each other _and_ they didn't end up dead,” he says. "Was rather damn formative growing up.”

Nick laughs.

"Reckon it would be,” he says. "Need help finding the others?”

“No, s’all right,” Louis says, rubbing Nick’s scalp some more and pressing a kiss to his cheekbone. "You sleep. I'll find them.”

"What about you?”

“What about me?”

Nick shifts, rolling over onto his back, and Louis is sort of forced into a half-sitting position across his chest, one hand on each side of Nick’s head. It means he gets to look down at Nick’s face, though, and he really doesn't mind that at all.

“Aren't you going to sleep?” Nick asks, reaching up and very gently tracing what Louis knows for a fact are the circles under his eyes. “You were up all night.”

"Probably crash mid-morning,” Louis says, because he probably will. “Ten a.m. Gonna go over like a tree, I am.”

Nick laughs and moves his fingers from under Louis’s eyes and up into his hair, straightening out his fringe and then dragging his thumb across Louis’s hairline. It’s nice, so nice that Louis shuts his eyes and has to suppress a shiver.

"I think you need sleep,” Nick says, his voice very low, and Louis thinks he likes it more than he should.

But he says, with a bit of a laugh and tilting his head down so Nick can reach more of it, “Had enough sleep lately, thanks. Kinda tired of it to be honest.”

"How can you be tired of sleeping?” Nick asks. "Didn’t think that was possible.”

"Well I used to sleep all the time, didn't I?” Louis returns, still keeping his eyes shut as Nick keeps petting at his hair. "And I just, I don't know, the reasons I’d be sleeping all the time would still be there when I woke up and I hated feeling groggy anyway so I decided I’d just...stay awake.”

There’s a very long silence, and then Nick asks, "When’d you decide this?”

And Louis is quiet for a very long time before he answers, “Just now.”

He opens his eyes and Nick’s staring back at him, his eyebrows furrowed and his mouth almost set in a line. Louis isn’t sure what to make of it, that expression, but he knows he doesn’t like it, so he sets about changing it, poking at the corners of Nick’s mouth in an attempt to get him to smile.

"I just think...it's time to try something else,” he says, when Nick's lips don't move. "Like, remember when we were skating?” He waits for Nick to nod his head. "It was good, just _moving_ , and it hurt like fuck the next morning, but I still _felt_ something and it wasn't because of something bad, and then just now with that book, same thing. It was, like, being reminded of how I used to be, how I _could_ be, and I just...I think I just want to work on that and I can't do it when I’m sleeping.”

Nick stares at him for a good long minute before his face relaxes into a smile.

"In that case,” he says. "I’m helping you find that book. Probably under the bed with the others, yeah?”

“Probably,” Louis says, and next thing he knows he's on his back with a face full of duvet, sputtering as he’s trying to get the corner of it out of his mouth. "What the hell Nicholas?”

“We’re looking for a book,” Nick says, and by the time Louis has got the duvet out of his face, Nick’s already off the bed and halfway under it.

"You don’t even know what it's called,” Louis says, sliding over to the edge, throwing his legs over, and poking at Nick’s back with his toes.

There’s a clanging sound followed by a very muffled “tell me then.”

"I actually don't know,” Louis says, sliding back and then off the other side of the bed. He picks his mobile up and then crawls under, clicking it on and beginning to search for the next title.

"Thought you said you loved those books.”

"I do,” Louis says. "Doesn’t mean I remember the names of all seven of them and what order they're in.”

"There’s seven?”

Louis nods even though Nick can't really see him.

"Yeah,” he says, turning the torch back on before he clicks his mobile off. “Next one's _Stalking Darkness_. It’s the one where Alec and Seregil finally kiss and say they love each other, all the way at the end of the damn book.”

"That bad?” Nick asks. He sounds amused.

"Yes,” Louis says, almost in a hiss, as he’s shining the torch at Nick’s face. "Proper annoying when you’ve got to wait that long for the snogging, especially when you're sixteen and want someone of your own to be messing around with.”

"You didn't have anyone?”

“Not at the time, no. Tris wasn't until later.”

"Who's Tris?”

“My idiot boyfriend from Upper Sixth,” Louis says, watching as a frown appears on Nick’s face and he gets entirely too interested in the protein bar wrapper in his hand. "He actually said that we should demote to friends when he was breaking up with me. Like seriously, demote to friends.”

Nick stares at him for a minute and then he laughs.

"Did he really say that?”

“I swear to _God_ , Nicholas, he did.”

“And what’d you say?”

“I said that we weren't friends in the first place and that he could go fuck himself with his stupid fucking scripts.”

"Scripts?”

“He fancied himself a playwright, and let's just say that the Clonazepam wasn't the only thing putting me to sleep when he’d read his plays to me.”

"What’s Clonazepam?”

Shit.

"It’s, uh,” Louis says, toying with the edge of his mobile phone case, “it's a pill...for anxiety. I took it for a while and then I...stopped.”

He can't but shudder remembering how badly his hands would shake, getting worse each time he lowered his dose, how tired and heavy his head always felt. And yet, he knows he’d have put up with another year of it if it meant he didn't have to go around feeling like a zombie like he had when he was taking his medicine in the blind hope that it’d actually _do_ something.

“I didn't know you were on medication,” Nick says eventually. "Thought you just went to the doctor and you didn't like it so you weren’t doing it again.”

"Who do you think put me on it?” Louis returns, and because this isn't a conversation he really wants to be having at whatever the fuck time it is, he starts sweeping his light around under the bed and looking for _Stalking Darkness_ in earnest. He actually finds it and the rest of the series in a haphazard pile against the wall and starts sliding them out one by one, the sound they make when they collide into whatever he’s got stacked beside the bed oddly satisfying.

"You know I don't care, right?” Nick says, looking at him from the other side of the bed once they’ve got back out from under it. He tries stretching his arm out toward Louis, but he can’t seem to reach. "Like, I don't think it makes you weak or whatever, having to take medicine for your head.”

"It’s not that so much as…” Louis says, about to climb halfway into bed like he had earlier when he decides, fuck it, he's climbing all the way in, if nothing else to get closer to Nick and his hair and his face. He gets himself settled and then starts toying with a bit of hair that’d fallen into Nick’s eyes, pushing it back and forth across his forehead and continuing, “as it's just something I don't...think I want to talk about, not anymore. When I was talking about the wall, saying that it's easier now than it's been in the past, that time when I was on the meds and then coming off was the really bad time. I’d think...things and not like that I was thinking them.”

"What kind of things?”

Nick’s suddenly so sad-looking, the corners of his mouth turning down again, and Louis hates that more than anything, probably more than he’s ever hated himself. And since there’s no way he's going to answer that question, no way that Nick’s ever going to know what violent, violent ideas would come crashing into his head, Louis just slides his hand under Nick’s chin and tilts his head up, forcing him to meet his eyes.

“Things I don't think anymore,” he says, and he can feel the smile curving his lips as he’s adding, so grateful because it's true, “things I’m not ever going to do.”

That, though, is a half-truth at best, because he still has the plan and a recently replaced bottle of insurance in his drawer, but if it gets that bad, then at least it won't be...messy.

"Are you sure?”

Louis doesn’t even hesitate.

"Yes.”

"Promise,” Nick says, his face as white as paper.

"I promise.”

And there’s a pang that hits right as soon as the words leave his mouth, the knowledge that it's a promise he might not be able to keep, at least not in the way Nick’s wanting it, burning and twisting through him, but he can’t not promise either. 

He can't let anyone take his plan away.

Even if he never goes through with it, and right now he actually still doesn't intend to, he still needs to have it there, just in case.

For insurance.

"Want to go out for a bit?” he asks, because the less he thinks about that the better, still tilting Nick’s chin up and slowly swiping his thumb back and forth across his cheek.

"Where are we going?” Nick asks, and he’s still looking a bit worn but at least he's not quite as pale.

Louis shrugs.

"Outside? Could watch the sun come up, come back in and crash.”

"Didn’t know you fancied sunrises,” Nick says, as a smile’s creeping onto his face.

"Of course I do,” Louis says, swiping his thumb across Nick’s cheek one more time and then leaning in even closer, going in for a kiss because nothing’s ever been a better idea and especially in this moment. “Brand new day and shit.”

Nick laughs right before their lips meet, and the thrill that shoots up from Louis’s chest the instant they do is so sudden that it damn near takes his breath away.

“Yeah, okay,” Nick says, once he’s pulled away, just enough that Louis can still feel his smile. “We’ll go out, but you're sleeping when we come back in.”

Louis can’t help but laugh.

"All right,” he says. He supposes _Stalking Darkness_ can wait until the evening. "But you’re sleeping with me.”

"Can't argue with that,” Nick says, standing and helping him out of bed.

“Of course you can't, Nicholas,” Louis returns, wrapping his arm around Nick’s waist as they’re walking toward the door. “You’d lose.”

Nick just laughs and squeezes his shoulder.

~*~

Nick ends up falling back asleep against him before the sun's even properly up.

“You’re going to make a terrible morning person,” Louis tells him, moving his hair back so he can keep looking at his eyelashes and the fading freckles on his nose. “No idea what it’d take to have you up and about early.”

"I’m surprised you are,” says a voice behind him, and Louis doesn’t have to turn around to know that it's Harry. Also, turning around would mean disturbing Nick and he’ll be damned if he’s doing that.

"Haven’t been to bed,” he says, as Harry’s taking a seat on the steps next to him. "What’s your excuse? Sunrise yoga or summat?”

Harry laughs and shakes his head.

"Something like that yes,” he says. "Was also gonna go to the...shops in a bit. Out of protein bars. Was gonna see if I could sneak some back in.”

"Yeah that's me,” Louis admits. "Sorry.”

"It’s fine,” Harry says, and there’s still a hint of laughter in his voice. "They're actually for you.”

"They're what?”

Louis finally looks over at him.

"They're for you,” Harry says, all seriousness and warmth. "They kept...disappearing, and we eventually figured it was you because it wasn't...any of us and we just decided, or I decided, that we’d keep getting them since...you don't really...eat anything else.”

"You noticed that?”

“We did,” Harry says, reaching over and poking at it his cheekbone. 

Louis freezes. 

Sure, his jeans are always loose, and he knows Nick knows about it, but he hadn’t thought that it’d be so...obvious that Harry would notice too.

“Were you ever going to say anything about it?” he asks, not sure how he feels about the fact that this is the first time it’s really being brought up.

“Liam...wanted to,” Harry says, looking down at his hands. “But I didn’t think it’d be a good idea, not...yet.”

That’s...new.

Different.

“Why not?”

“Would you have wanted us saying anything?” Harry looks up at him, and his expression’s hard to make out. “If we’d said...something, how do you think you’d...take it?”

Louis knows the answer to that at least.

“Not well.”

“You’d have got angry,” Harry says, nudging him very gently in the shoulder. “Like you did at the restaurant...that day.”

“It was…” Louis begins, but he really doesn’t want to revisit that day, doesn’t want to remember the pointlessness and the frustration of that time. Especially not now with his arm around Nick and the sky shot through with orange and pink like he’s always liked, so he just trails off and doesn’t bother finishing his sentence.

“I know” is all Harry says, and Louis could hug him, but again, that would mean disturbing Nick and he _isn’t_ doing that, so he just rests his head on Harry’s shoulder instead, watching with him as the blue in the sky gets brighter, striking out the orange and pink, and feeling the humidity start to turn to heat.

“Thanks,” he says, finally moving his head after a long while, sitting up straighter and adjusting his grip on Nick. "I’ll pay you back sometime.”

He's suddenly aware that he isn’t just talking about protein bars.

"You don’t have to…” Harry begins, but Louis cuts him off.

“I do,” he says, reaching over and grabbing Harry’s wrist. "I just...do, and I’m going to, and none of you are going to talk me out of it.”

"Not even you,” he adds, looking down at Nick, who’s begun to stir. Nick opens his eyes and blinks back at him, and there’s a smile that creeps up on his face when Louis squeezes his shoulder.

"I fell asleep, didn't I?” he says, and Louis laughs.

"You did.”

"Sorry.”

"S’okay.” It really is. "Had Harold to keep me company.”

"Hello,” Harry says, right on cue, and Louis can feel his chin digging just a bit into his shoulder.

"Hello,” Nick says. "Did I miss something?”

“No,” Harry says, shaking his head before Louis has a chance to respond. “Except I think Lou here said he’s gonna do us a fry-up.”

"I did not say that,” Louis says, twisting to look at him. "And you both know I can't really cook for shit.”

"Sure you can,” Harry says, standing up and pulling Louis up along with him. “I’ll help. Show you...how to...whisk.”

"That stopped being funny ages ago, Harold,” Louis says, shaking his hand free of Harry’s and then helping Nick to his feet. 

He has just enough time to hear Nick say “you cook just fine” before Harry laughs and reaches back to pull him inside.

~*~

It takes him a week to finish the _Nightrunner_ series, a week he spends in his room with more boxes of protein bars than can possibly be healthy for one person and the apples he lets Harry sneak him, almost literally growling at anyone who comes in and bothers him.

Unless they're Nick.

Nick, he decides, can bother him all he likes, although it's not really being a bother, him lying there with his face in his mobile and his head on Louis’s thigh, his legs stretched out and disappearing under Louis’s desk. The desk that still needs clearing off, and Louis is beginning to think he might just be in a state to get it done.

“How much do I have to bribe you to help me tidy in here?” he asks, setting _Shards of Time_ to the side and running his fingers through Nick’s hair. The pink’s not as bright, and hints of bleach are already starting to show, but still, it's nice.

“Dunno,” Nick says, tipping his head back. "Depends on what you're going to bribe me with.”

And although it's his first thought, Louis says, “it's not going to be sex, Nicholas.”

Nick makes a face at him.

"Wasn’t going to ask for sex, _Lewis_ ,” he says, going back to his phone and rapidly typing something out. "And I,” he adds, putting his phone down and sitting up, “might have just committed you to something in a couple of weeks, so bribery isn’t going to be necessary, I don't think.”

"What’d you commit me to?” Louis asks, narrowing his eyes at him.

Nick’s eyes get huge for some reason, and then he bites his lip.

"It’s a...party,” he says, almost agonisingly slow. 

"What kind of party?”

“The one...Pixie and Aimee and Daisy have...right before the beginning of term. Aimee asked if you were coming, and I...said you would.”

"And when did you say that?” Louis asks, raising an eyebrow.

Nick chews at his lip some more and then glances down at his mobile for a minute.

“Just now,” he says, looking back up.

“Just now,” Louis echoes.

Nick nods his head.

"You like Aimee,” he says, as if that's somehow going to make a difference.

"I do like Aimee,” Louis says, because he does actually. “I don’t like dinner parties.”

"And I know it's a dinner party,” he adds, before Nick can say anything, “because Harold’s gone before, and then I’ve had to listen to him banging on about seven different types of salad or whatever. I'm not a fucking rabbit.”

"I think you’d make a good rabbit. Really cute,” Nick says, then adding quickly, “and it isn't a dinner party this year. It’s a beach party. They’ve rented out a place in Teignmouth for the weekend, that weekend before term starts, and they wanted us all to come.”

"How’d they manage that?”

Not that it doesn't sound wonderful, because Louis really does love a beach, but it sounds a bit...too good to be true.

"Pix’s dad is loaded and he knows a guy,” Nick says. "And I helped and so did everyone else so it wasn't much, really.”

"So what’d be my share then?”

“No share,” Nick says, and Louis is just about to protest when he adds, “But I suppose you can help order the drinks when the time comes, unless you're all right with just wine.”

And Louis actually likes wine, even not so treacherous Merlot, but he still has to say, for form and all, “Might need something stronger if I’m spending the weekend trapped in a house with you lot.”

"I’m going to be there,” Nick says, managing to look half amused and half cross. "And Harry's going and so is Liam.”

“Oh I can put up with it then if it's _Liam_ ,” Louis says, crawling right into Nick’s lap and poking at his hair. "He's gonna be the only reason I go.”

"You’ll make Harry cry, saying that,” Nick says, and Louis laughs.

"Which is why we aren't going to tell him,” he says, poking at Nick’s nose next and watching, all warm inside, as he scrunches his face up each time. “You’re so dumb,” he adds, and he can hear that warmth leaking into his voice as he’s moving his hands to cup Nick’s cheeks. 

"Maybe,” Nick says, and Louis can feel him getting warmer under his hands. "But I’m not the one who's in love with me, so there.”

"If anyone's in love with you, it's you,” Louis returns, sliding his hands back and into Nick’s hair.

"I am pretty amazing,” Nick says, nodding as best he can and moving his legs up, sending Louis tilting forward so suddenly that they only just miss knocking their heads together. As it is, they're so close that Louis can almost feel Nick’s breath on his lips.

"You're something all right,” he says, pulling at Nick’s hair and watching as his eyes go wide. "You like that, don't you?”

Nick nods.

"Sometimes.”

"You’ll tell me when you don't, right?”

Nick nods again.

"Is it okay now?”

“Yeah.”

So Louis keeps pulling, working his fingers further into Nick’s hair and getting great chunks of it, and he’s leaning in and pressing their lips together before he's even had time to think about it. There’s a catch in Nick’s breathing, a catch he’s heard before but that still manages to land like a punch somewhere deep inside, and it’s so...he can’t describe what it's like, feeling that at last, at fucking _last_ , and he doesn’t even want to.

Because that would mean thinking, and Louis is really tired of thinking.

And this, Nick warm underneath him and his grip strong and his lips so soft against his own, is so, so much better than thinking. There’s a bit of worry poking around in the back of his mind, worry that something’s going to happen to make everything go horribly wrong, but Louis just holds onto Nick tighter and tries to ignore it as best he can.

And he's able to, surprisingly, ignore that and a lot of other nasty, niggling things until a clap of thunder sounds, startling them apart.

"What the fuck was that?” he asks, breathlessly, his heart pounding as he’s pulling back a bit. 

"Thunder I think,” Nick says, sounding every bit as out of breath as Louis is, his hands dropping to Louis’s hips and holding on tight.

"Summer, nice,” Louis says, resting his forehead against Nick’s and trying to get his breathing back under control.

Nick gusts out a laugh right as the rain begins to fall, heavily.

"Probably ought to close the window before the summer gets in here, ruins your sheets.”

"They’re cheap sheets so I really don’t care,” Louis says, although he does get up and crawl into bed so he can shut the window before a typhoon or whatever it is rolls in. He’s just got it half closed when he remembers something.

“Nicholas,” he says, abandoning the window. Nick turns his head, and Louis can just barely make out his eyes. “It’s raining.”

Nick laughs and turns some more, resting his chin on the edge of the bed.

“It is doing that,” he says.

Louis only barely manages to restrain himself from rolling his eyes.

"Do you remember what you said you'd do when the rain came back?”

“I…,” Nick says and then stops, his mouth dropping open and his cheeks starting to go pink, “I do.”

They stare at each other forever it seems like, the air in the room getting heavier and almost...expectant.

"It’s raining, Nicholas,” Louis says at last.

"Yeah,” Nick says, with a nod and his voice low. "It is.”

"You don’t have to if you don't want to.”

"No,” Nick says with a shake of his head, stretching his arm out and letting Louis take his hand. "I’ll do it. Said I would.”

He gives Louis a smile and then he looks down and away. He rummages around a bit and then comes up with his mobile, placing it on the bed and clicking it on.

"I’m not stripping,” he says, concentrating on finding the song. 

“I wouldn't ask you to,” Louis says, adding when Nick looks up, “I just want to see you in your pants.”

Nick just blinks, his cheeks still pink, but he laughs when Louis mouths _nice legs_ at him.

"They are nice legs,” Louis says, letting go of Nick’s hand and moving onto his stomach so he can start undoing the buttons on Nick’s shirt. He stops halfway down, but only because he decides that he likes how it looks, not because he can’t reach anymore and definitely not because of that very small part of him that knows exactly what it looks like that he’s _doing_.

That part of him that's making his stupid ears burn.

"Don't suppose you're going to be in your pants are you?”

“Hadn’t planned on it, no,” Louis says, even as he’s turning over onto his back and reaching for his zip. "Lock the door, would you? Not all that interested in having Harry and Liam barging in on us.”

“That would be terrible,” Nick says, and Louis can hear a rustling of clothes as he’s standing up. “No matter how much they deserve it.”

"They do deserve it an awful lot, especially Harold,” Louis says, waiting for the click of the lock to get out of his jeans, sliding them down and off his legs before tossing them over his head and reaching for the hem of his shirt. He pulls that off too, sending it after his jeans, and then he lies back, focusing on the ceiling and willing the flush that he can feel spreading across his chest to go the fuck away.

He hears Nick say his name, and then he's right there, bent down and propped up on his arms with his shirt loosely hanging in Louis’s face.

"I thought I was dancing,” he says, watching as Louis reaches up and undoes the rest of his buttons.

"Did you really want to?” Louis asks, not quite brave enough to go for Nick’s zip so he just hangs on to the tails of his shirt, very slowly moving them around so he can see more of his chest. He likes Nick’s chest. It’s one of his favourite things besides his voice and his hair and his face, and Louis figures now’s as good as anytime to let himself have a nice, long look. “I get the feeling you don't.”

"I don't know,” Nick says, with a bit of a laugh, and Louis can actually hear the nervousness in it. "S’like it's different if it's something, you know, spontaneous. Like you're in your room or wherever, doing whatever, and the song’s on and then you can't help but move around to it, but now it's just...weird. Like performing or something, and I’m usually all right with that, you know how I am, but this time...it's like it...matters and I don’t know…”

He trails off, looking more at Louis’s chest instead of at his face, and the thing is, Louis really does know.

He knows so much.

“Get your trousers off and come here,” he says, letting go of Nick’s shirt. “Bring your phone.”

Nick nods and does as he’s told, and Louis doesn’t miss what sounds a lot like a sigh of relief as Nick’s retrieving his mobile from the floor and then climbing into bed with him, stretching out beside him in just his shirt and his pants and clutching his mobile to his chest so tightly that his knuckles are almost white. 

"Give it,” Louis says, wiggling his fingers, and Nick lets him have his phone, moving closer when Louis clicks it on and starts searching for a different song. His cheek ends up pressed against Louis’s, his arm goes across Louis’s chest, and their knees tangle, making Louis so warm that he’s sure Nick can feel it too.

He hopes Nick can feel it too.

“Looking for something in particular?”

“Something better for the rain I think.”

"Might know something,” Nick says, taking the phone back and beginning to scroll through the songs one-handed. "Found this one site and it's just piano covers of all these different songs. Even had Kanye.”

"They didn't,” Louis says, turning his head and having his nose end up in Nick’s cheek.

"They did,” Nick says. "Can prove it.”

He thumbs around some more on his mobile, brow furrowed in concentration and eventually biting at his lip again. He’s really so damn nice to look at that it's almost all Louis can do not to throw himself at him and hold him and kiss him senseless.

As it is, he just rolls over onto his side, tangling their legs together again and resting his head on his arm so he can keep looking. Nick notices him soon enough, not that Louis was really trying to hide what he was doing at all.

“Is there something on my face?”

“Yeah,” Louis says with a nod, reaching out and trailing a finger over Nick’s cheekbone. He waits until Nick’s eyes get really huge and then he adds, “Got your face all over it.”

Nick blinks at him for almost an entire minute and then he laughs, setting his phone down somewhere and reaching for Louis, getting him by the shoulder blade and holding on tight.

"You're as bad as I am,” he says. "Properly. See if I play you Piano Kanye now.”

"I’m distraught I’m sure.”

"You should be. It’s an experience.”

"I’m sure it is.”

Nick doesn’t say anything to that, just shakes his head with his smile still in place, and Louis stops him with a hand to his cheek, cupping it and making him look back up.

“You’re stupidly hot,” he says, after about a very nice and long minute or two, and Nick gusts out a laugh.

"Thanks.”

"I mean it, Nicholas,” Louis says, holding onto his face just a little bit harder. "Like, ridiculously hot.”

"Thanks,” Nick says again, and Louis can feel warmth spreading across his palm.

"So you really don't have anything to worry about,” he continues as his heart’s started to pound. "You're hot and I fancy you rotten and it’s okay if you don't ever dance for me in your pants. We can do other stuff.”

"Okay,” Nick says, and Louis slides his hand back and into his hair, tugging at it a little, and then guiding Nick’s head closer.

"I’m kinda scared too,” he says, stopping right before their lips can touch. He can still feel them brushing against each other as he’s talking, and it sets up something shivery inside him. "Like, my big thing is that I'm gonna say something or do something and it's gonna be weird and then you’ll...want someone else...someone who can...do it right.”

"It’s not gonna be weird…I’m not gonna...” Nick says, but Louis cuts him off by wiggling a finger in between them and pressing it to Nick’s mouth.

"I know,” he says, and he does know. “But there's this one pain in the arse part of me that’s never gonna stop thinking that, and I just...wanted you to know about it. Again, I guess.”

"All right,” Nick says, after a long pause, opening and closing his mouth a couple of times before he continues, “so maybe you should figure out what you want and how and I’ll just do whatever, you know, within that. Wouldn’t be so bad that I don't think.”

Louis doesn’t think so either, no matter how daunting the idea seems, but he still has to say, “You’ll have to tell me if there's something you don't like.”

"Aside from the secrets thing,” he adds, when Nick opens his mouth again, “because I already know about that one.”

"Okay,” Nick says, with a bit of a laugh. "I will. Promise.”

"Good lad, Nicholas,” Louis says, right before he closes the distance between them. He lets go of Nick’s hair and winds his arms down and into Nick’s shirt, locking them around his back, and he really has to pull, but somehow he manages to get Nick on top of him. 

It isn’t nearly as terrifying as he’d thought it'd be.

And, as he’s moving his hands back into Nick’s hair and pulling him down again, the only thing really crossing his mind, other than just how good Nick feels against him, is _maybe I can do this after all and not fuck it up_.

_Maybe there's actual hope for me yet._

~*~

It takes Louis another week to finally get his room clean again, back to the way it’d been before his little...episode.

And, surprisingly, it does feel better, having things put away where they go, from his shoes and his clothes to the stacks of books that he’d ended up moving from his desk to the floor so they’d be a little less dangerous and also so he couldn't see them glaring at him, demanding to be read. Not that he's going to be pressured by a damn _book_ , but sometimes it's still hard to ignore them, no matter how many times he’s told himself that he’s got time to get to them and that even if he doesn't, it's not exactly the end of the world. It isn’t always easy, shaking off that pressure, but he finds that he’s actually able to manage it more often than not.

And he doesn’t tell Nick, doesn’t tell anyone, but he starts making room for a possible roommate, clearing things out of his drawers and his wardrobe and the cupboards in his bathroom and sticking Nick’s accumulated things in the empty spaces. He isn’t to the point where he feels he can really ask Nick to move in with him just yet, but he does feel like it's coming soon, and he wants to be ready when it does. He’s fairly confident that he’s been sneaky enough going about it, but even if he hasn't, at least Nick’s been gracious enough not to mention it.

The sleeping pills, however, are a problem. A ridiculous problem, because he can either throw them out or stick them in a cupboard so that everyone knows about them, but somehow he can’t bring himself to do either one of those things. Not...just yet.

In the end he decides to leave them right where they are.

He can deal with them later.

He’s got other things to do.

~*~

Pixie and Aimee and Daisy's summer party in Teignmouth turns out to be _amazing_ , an entire weekend at some enormous house not far at all from the beach with entirely too much wine, as if that's actually a thing, and the sound of the ocean and the call of birds always in his ears.

Always with the singing, the birds.

He takes their picture and sticks it on Instagram.

"That’s, like, your fifth one today,” Nick says, lying on a blanket beside him, all grumpy behind his sunglasses because _someone_ had a little too much on their first night in.

“Turn your notifications off then,” Louis says, nudging his football away with his foot and taking a picture of that too, sticking it on Instagram with the bird picture and a picture of their glasses from the previous night and a underlit selfie of him and Nick from sometime at arse o’clock in the morning. It still feels silly sometimes, documenting himself so much, but it’s also kinda nice, helps him remember things better, and sometimes he really does just sit back and look over his Instagram and think that his life might be small, but it’s his at least, not anyone else's.

And it’s a powerful thing, coming to the realisation that it's _okay_ to be small, to have a simple, quiet life and no idea what it's all supposed to mean. How liberating the idea is that he can pretty much do whatever he wants and that it’ll still matter, that it’ll be enough because in the end _he’s_ enough, all by himself.

He puts his phone down and picks his book back up, a battered copy of _Of Human Bondage_ that he’d found during his cleaning. It’s another one of his favourites that he’d forgotten about, and the first time he’d picked it back up and flipped through its pages, most of them with quotes from everyone from Kierkegaard and Camus to Douglas Adams and Neil Gaiman detailing life and direction and purpose scratched into the margins, well, he’d cried.

He’d _had_ his own marginalia, of a sort, and he’d forgotten, and finding it again was so much like coming home after being lost at sea for a very long time that he couldn't _not_ cry.

The book goes almost everywhere with him now, with its taped-together cover and grease-stained pages, and he wouldn't trade it for anything.

Especially not since he's started adding song lyrics to it, mostly other people's but sometimes his own. They’re usually never anything special, his random scraps of words, but they're an outlet he’d had no idea he’d even needed.

“I thought you finished that one already,” Nick says, once Louis has got himself situated at Nick’s side, flat on his back with the book held up over his face to block out the sun trying to sneak in under their umbrella.

"Third time’s the charm, Nicholas.”

"It’s massive though.”

"Massively brilliant you mean.”

"What’s so brilliant about it?” Nick asks, rolling over on his side and facing him. "You never say.”

"Because it’s...lots of things,” Louis says, moving his arm and letting Nick crawl under. "About life and stuff and simplicity and it’s just...it's hard to explain really. You almost have to read it, see for yourself.”

"No thanks,” Nick says, burying his face in Louis’s chest.

“Heathen,” Louis says, smacking him in the arm with the book, but he isn’t actually bothered. Because that's a powerful thing too, being able to let go and to let things be exactly what they are.

He rubs at the two-week-old tattoo across his chest, the _it is what it is_ he’d been considering back in April for entirely different reasons but that means something else now. It’s still a bit sensitive, but Louis doesn’t mind that either. It’s not a bad hurt, and it’s a reminder that he isn’t numb, not anymore. 

Which is why when Nick asks him if he's okay, if he needs more salve or something, Louis can honestly tell him, “No, love. I'm fine. Perfect, actually.”

~*~

Their first time is actually not perfect.

But it turns out perfect in the end, as perfect as it can be anyway.

It happens that night, Saturday, after a bonfire on the beach that they’d somehow managed to keep under control, and it’d really only taken a couple of glasses of red wine and looking at Nick’s face in the firelight for Louis to pull him up by the hand and drag him to their room. Harry’d called out something after them, and Louis hadn’t stopped long enough to hear it, but he'd flipped him off over his shoulder anyway.

Form and all. 

The house is dark when they get in, the only light the one over the cooker that someone had left on, and it’s barely enough for him to be able to see as he’s pushing Nick backwards up the stairs.

"Are we?” Nick asks, catching him by the hands when he nearly face-plants onto the landing.

"We are,” Louis says, nodding even though Nick probably can't see him. "I mean, if you want to. Otherwise we'll just wait until the others get back in and make lots of noise for effect.”

"They'd like that I'm sure,” Nick says, sounding amused as he’s leading Louis down the hall and into the bedroom they’d claimed as their own, a massive one facing the beach, and if Louis looks hard enough, he can dimly make out the bonfire still burning away.

"Harry’s a bit of a freak so probably, yeah,” Louis says, and Nick laughs. "Thinks clothes are limiting after all.”

"He just wears his jeans too tight.”

"Wonder where he picked that up,” Louis says, letting go of Nick’s hand and snagging him by one of his belt loops. 

"No idea,” Nick says, looking down at Louis’s hand where it’s still pulling at his jeans and then back up. “I’ve got on the biggest ones in Devon.”

Louis snorts out a laugh.

"Yes, and you're very lovely.” Nick really is, even with the moonlight making his skin look blue. “Can hardly keep me hands to myself.”

"Would explain why you're trying to take my clothes off,” Nick says, glancing down again at where Louis’s hand has strayed over to his button and is idly toying with it.

“We don’t have to,” Louis says, his ears and his cheeks beginning to heat as he’s looking down too. 

“I want to,” Nick says, his voice gone low as he’s taking a seat on the edge of the bed, and when Louis looks back up at him, his eyes are so wide and so...sincere, and his smile’s a little nervous thing that hits him square in the chest.

Louis loves him so much.

“Okay,” he says, cupping Nick’s face and leaning in to kiss him. He slides his hands back into Nick’s hair and pulls just enough to make Nick’s lips part, and when they do, he can’t help but sink his teeth a little into the bottom one at first and then swipe his tongue over it. He really isn’t probably ever going to get over just how nice Nick’s mouth is, how good it feels against his own.

"I don't want it gentle,” he says, pulling away just enough so he can get the words out. 

"Gentle?”

“No,” Louis says, shaking his head. "Can't...not...like that. Not...not soft.”

"I…” Nick says, leaning back and looking at him all confused for a moment before his face clears and he adds, “I understand.”

"Do you?”

“Yeah,” Nick says, with a small smile and a nod, reaching up and moving some of Louis’s hair out of his eyes. 

"And you're all right with that?”

“Of course I am,” Nick says, letting his hand drop down to his lap. “Be a right prick if I wasn't.”

"And you're not that.”

Louis thinks he's convincing himself as much as he’s telling Nick.

"Definitely not,” Nick says, still smiling at him as he’s standing up a little straighter. 

Louis snorts out a laugh.

"Glad we agree then.”

“I’m...likewise,” Nick says, almost surprised, and Louis lets it go for a minute, but only a minute, because he isn’t going to be having Nick thinking and wondering about his past. Louis certainly isn't going to be thinking about it himself, despite what's trying to work its way into his thoughts. 

He shakes it off as best he can without being noticeable, placing his hands on Nick’s shoulders and leaning in to kiss him again. Nick’s grip is firm when his hands land on Louis’s hips, and he goes over easily when Louis starts to push him back, somehow managing to never let go at the same time.

If anything, his grip gets even tighter, and it’s such a good thing because Louis is beginning to feel almost dizzy. His head’s spinning and he can't really breathe or hear and he doesn’t think it’d take very much to send him tipping off to the side, rolling off of Nick and onto the floor. He locks his thighs around Nick’s waist, ignoring the way his knees shake, and grabs harder at him, finding first his shoulders and then his hair. He pulls at it and hears Nick’s breath catch, and this time, _this_ time, the sound goes right to his dick like it damn well should.

He pulls at Nick’s hair again, harder, and Nick starts to squirm, his hands leaving Louis’s hips and grabbing onto his shoulders to hold him even closer, even though there’s already barely a whisper of air between them. Louis breaks away from kissing him and sinks his teeth back into Nick’s lip, moving his hand down to Nick’s neck. He can feel Nick’s heartbeat there through the thin skin, and it’s so...frantic and fast and it’s so much like his own thudding away inside his ears that he almost begins to think that maybe they should stop before one or both of them ends up sick.

But he can’t and he won't because he's okay and he loves Nick so much and he _wants_ him and they're gonna be all right after and for a very long time. So he sits back and up, rubbing his thumb across Nick’s swollen bottom lip and then telling him, “You’re wearing too many clothes.”

"You're always wearing too many clothes,” he adds, when Nick doesn’t do more than blink up at him, his face eventually settling back into a smile as Louis starts undoing the buttons on his shirt.

“You’re always saying that.”

"It’s always true.”

Nick laughs and once Louis’s moved down to straddle his legs, he sits up, leaned back on his hands and watching as Louis finishes with his shirt and starts in on his jeans.

"Did you bring anything?” he asks, and Louis stops just as he’s got Nick’s zip pulled all the way down. "I didn’t,” he adds, after a beat of silence that almost feels endless, and his voice is suddenly so loud. "I thought it'd be presumptuous or something so I...didn't.”

Louis hadn’t thought to bring anything at all.

It’d never even crossed his mind.

"Do we need anything?” he asks, and he’s speaking low, his head bent and watching his hand as he starts to very slowly move his fingers up and down Nick’s half-hard cock, but somehow, he manages to sound just as loud as Nick had.

Must be the stillness of the room.

It’s so incredibly still.

“I…” Nick says and then stops, his mouth hanging open when Louis finally looks up at him. His eyes are wide again and a bit dark, and he’s so beautiful Louis could scream. "I don't know.”

Louis looks back down at his hand.

"I don't think we do,” he says, almost in a whisper, as he starts moving his fingers up and down again, dragging his nails across the fabric of Nick’s pants. "You're only my second. Last time was...years ago.”

 _I didn’t like it_ darts into his head, and he squeezes his eyes shut because _no_.

Not thinking about that.

“I’ve...never,” Nick says, after a very long time, “not...without.”

"We can go get something.”

“Steal it...from Harold, you mean?”

Nick’s smiling again when Louis opens his eyes and peeks through his fringe at him.

"Yeah,” Louis says. "Sure he won't mind.”

"Probably not.”

"Do you want me to?”

Nick’s smile dims but doesn't drop, and he looks at Louis forever it feels like before he eventually, so slightly it could almost be a trick of the light, shakes his head.

"No,” he says, clearing his throat and saying a little louder, “it’ll be okay...without.”

"Okay,” Louis says, mostly in a rush of air, and he flattens his hand on Nick’s cock, palming him a bit through the fabric of his pants before moving his hands away and toward Nick’s hips. He rests them there for just a second or two, and then he moves back onto the floor, tugging at the waistband of Nick’s jeans until he gets the hint and lifts his bum. Louis starts to pull, hard because Nick’s jeans really are that tight, and he manages to get both Nick's jeans and his pants, but...it's okay.

Okay, despite how hard it is to breathe and the dizziness that's come back, but he...doesn’t feel like he's someone else, his hands are all his own, and it’s just...okay.

More than okay, because the look on Nick’s face when he pops his head over the edge of the bed is...

"Christ,” Louis says, and he can't get out of his own clothes fast enough. He kicks his jeans off almost angrily when one of the legs gets caught on his heel, and then he's back in Nick’s lap, cradling his stupidly hot face in his hands and pulling him into a kiss so hard and so fast that their teeth clack together at first. He moves his hand and pulls at Nick’s hair, so roughly that Nick actually cries out, and he’s about to apologise when Nick moves his head and sinks his teeth into the skin of Louis’s neck. Louis’s head jerks to the side, and he digs his fingers into the fabric of Nick’s shirt, pulling at it hard and gritting his teeth and trying so desperately not to lose it right then and there.

 _Don't be weird,_ he thinks, moving one of his hands to cup the back of Nick’s head, trying to hold him there for as long as he can stand it. _Please don’t be weird_.

As long as he can stand it isn't very long at all, and once he can start to feel something that’s a lot like unease crawling up from his collarbones, running over his shoulders, and then creeping up his neck, he winds his fingers into Nick’s hair and forces him away and back and _off_.

“Now,” he says, taking in Nick's huge eyes and open mouth and the bit of hair that’s flopped down into the middle of his forehead. He moves it away with a hand that's started to shake just enough to be noticeable and adds, “It has to be now.”

"I...okay,” Nick says, reaching up too, and Louis thinks he's about to grab his hand or something equally unbearable, but he seems to catch himself, running his fingers across Louis’s fringe and then dropping his hand to Louis’s shoulder and squeezing it. "Like it any way in particular?”

Louis shakes his head.

He's only had it the one way and…

No.

No no no.

He squeezes his eyes shut and makes himself breathe, very slowly, in and out.

"So I can just lie back and let you do all the work, then?” Nick asks after about a minute or two that Louis is so grateful for, and he hasn’t got all his air back, but still he somehow manages to laugh.

"S’all on you,” he says, opening his eyes and poking at Nick’s nose. “Except I'm not gonna be on my back.”

"Fair enough,” Nick says, his smile easy, and Louis could hug him he’s so grateful for that too. “Hands and knees it is.”

"It is,” Louis agrees, because he can handle that he thinks, and he can't resist gathering Nick into a hug after all before he gets off of him, pressing his cheek against Nick’s warm, scratchy one and telegraphing _thank you thank you thank you_ at him as best he can. He imagines, for a second, that Nick somehow hears it anyway, given just how tightly he starts to hug Louis back.

"Are you sure we're not gonna need lube or summat?” Nick asks, once they’ve let go of each other, Louis having slid off of him and taken a seat at his side.

"Yes,” Louis says, reaching right over and wrapping his hand around Nick’s cock. It’s warm and soft as silk against his palm, and it only takes a bit of idle stroking to get it hard again. "I’ve done it before without. Just need spit.”

"It didn't hurt?”

“Not really, no.”

"Are you sure?”

Nick’s breathing’s beginning to sound ragged. 

Louis doesn’t stop moving his hand.

"I promise,” he says eventually, looking up and meeting Nick’s eyes. "Didn’t hurt at all.”

It’d felt weird and he hadn't wanted it, not like that, but it hadn't hurt.

"Okay,” Nick says, chiefly on an exhale, and Louis looks at him for another few seconds, smiling at him before bending over and taking him into his mouth. 

The soundNick makes, that gasp, is worth it, worth how much he actually doesn't like this sort of thing, he decides, as he’s moving his head up and down, coating Nick’s cock with saliva, and the way his hips jerk when Louis pulls off with a pop is even more so.

"You're all ready, Nicholas,” he says, grinning at him as he’s wiping at his mouth. He’s so glad it's dark so Nick can't see just how much his hand wobbles and how his smile’s probably more crazed than anything. There’s heat crawling up his neck and headed toward his ears, and he’s glad Nick can't see that either.

So, so glad.

"I am,” Nick says, almost like he’s convincing himself. Louis squeezes his knee and he relaxes somewhat. “Are you?”

“Yep,” Louis says, scooting back and then turning over onto his front. He's barely hard, and he’s sure that that weird, spiky feeling coursing through him is adrenaline, but he still adds anyway, “Let’s do it. Me. Let's do me.”

"All right,” Nick says, with a laugh, which, thank fuck, and then his hands are on Louis’s hips, his fingers just barely touching Louis’s skin.

“Not soft, Nicholas,” Louis reminds him, moving his hips about so Nick’s forced to grab onto him.

"Sorry,” Nick says, digging his fingers in even more. Louis hopes it's enough to leave marks. "Are you sure you don't need…”

“I’m sure,” Louis says, trying to look at him over his shoulder. "It’s gonna be all right.”

"But what if I…”

He trails off and Louis can feel the minute shake of his hands.

"You won't,” he says, because if nothing else, that's something he knows, something he can feel deep down in his bones, just from that small tremor. "You're not going to hurt me. Just go really slow at the start, yeah?”

“I...okay,” Nick says, but it’s not until Louis reaches back and grabs one of his hands that he actually starts to move.

And it does feel weird at first, that same strangeness that he remembers from the last time that was his terrible first time ever, but it’s...okay.

Because Nick’s hands have gone cold as his grip’s got tighter, and there’s something about knowing that he’s just as nervous about this whole thing as Louis is that's so...comforting that he can’t help but say, moving Nick’s hand that he’s still got a hold of over to his stomach and curling it into a fist, “I love you so much.”

“I wanted you to know,” he says, during a gap in which Nick’s rhythm falters. "I know you're not supposed to say it like this, but I want you to know. You’re so...good. To me.”

Nick doesn’t say anything, and Louis is starting to get hazy enough not to care that he’s said too much, but then Nick stops and pulls him up flush against his chest, shaking his hand free and wrapping his arm around Louis’s waist.

"I love you too,” he says, in a whisper right into Louis’s ear, and Louis’s heart stops. Just stops, and he can't breathe and his skin’s started to feel clammy, but he...wouldn't ever move. "So much. Too.”

Louis can’t help but laugh, a wheezy, strange, breathless thing, and it’s so...dizzying that he’s glad he's got Nick holding him up.

Always holding him up.

“Move,” he says, and it comes out sounding almost slurred he’s suddenly so deliriously happy. So fuzzy and far away, but it’s not the bad sort of far away. It doesn’t _feel_ like the bad sort of far away, not in the slightest. He turns his head, guiding Nick’s hand across his stomach and then down to his cock before moving his arm and reaching up to cup the back of Nick’s neck. "You're not moving. You stopped.”

"Sorry,” Nick says, still whispering in his ear, but there's a hint of laughter in his voice, and he starts moving again, slow at first and then faster, only stumbling when he tries matching the movement of his hand on Louis to the rhythm of his hips.

"I’ll do it,” Louis says, moving Nick’s hand back up across his stomach and resting it on his waist. There’s a tingling sensation crawling up his spine, and he’s dimly aware that he's going to need this to be over soon. Not because it's bad, because it really, really isn’t, not with his Nicholas, but because he can’t risk the panic that he’s sure is lurking around somewhere inside him. 

Can't have it popping out for a visit.

Can't relax and let it in, let it take over, no matter how good he feels.

And he feels so good.

He tilts his head back into Nick’s chest, hitting harder than he’d intended, and then he grabs onto Nick’s arm with one hand while he’s wanking himself with the other. He squeezes his eyes shut and starts picturing Nick’s face in sunlight, his hair, his hands, his smile, the curve of his lips, the curve of his hip, the warmth of his skin and the scratch of his hair against the sharpness of his bones. So, so many things, all of them so damn lovely and perfect and beautiful, and he doesn’t even realise he’s come until he finds himself gasping for air, his hand sticky and his legs starting to shake. Nick, mercifully, isn’t very far after him, pressing his damp forehead against Louis’s shoulder and gasping for air himself, his breath cool against Louis’s overheated skin. He’s still shaking just a bit too, and Louis doesn’t know what else to do other than cradle his arm and hold him until the tremors subside.

"You were so good,” he murmurs. "Thank you.”

"I wanted it to be good...for you.”

"It was.” Louis squeezes Nick’s arm. "Good for you too, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Nick says, in a gust of air that Louis is going to take for a laugh. His arm gets tighter around Louis’s waist as he’s guiding them down into a sort of sitting position and then hooking his chin over Louis’s shoulder. "It was that. Very much.”

"And I wasn't weird.”

He can feel Nick shaking his head.

"You weren’t. Not at all.”

It gets quiet then, and it stays quiet until Louis can feel his knees start to ache.

"Let's get you clean, yeah?” Nick says, once he’s started to move around a little to take some of the pressure off, and Louis just nods, sliding off of Nick and curling up on his side.

He shuts his eyes, and he listens as Nick’s putting his clothes back on. He tilts his head into the kiss Nick presses to his cheek, and it isn't until he can feel something cool and damp against his back that his eyes fly open, almost like he’s just been startled out of sleep.

“Sorry,” he hears Nick say from somewhere behind him. "Didn’t mean to scare you or anything.”

"’M not scared,” Louis says, even though his heart’s lodged in his throat and beating furiously. "Just...fell asleep I guess.”

"I don't know if that's a compliment or an insult,” Nick says, and Louis can't help but laugh.

"Compliment I think,” he says, reaching back and feeling around until he finds Nick’s knee, giving it a pat. "Means I’m all content-like.”

"I can see that, yeah,” Nick says, and he waits until Louis’s moved his arm back around to start cleaning him off. He’s slow and careful and never soft, and Louis is so proud of himself for not jumping or starting at all. There’s an odd sort of tingling sensation crawling all over his skin again, but he’s okay. Even his heart’s stopped pounding so hard. "You can get the front if you want.”

"You do it,” Louis says, rolling over onto his back and flapping a hand at him. "You're good at it.”

"Okay,” Nick says, and Louis can hear the smile in his voice. "If you insist.”

"I do insist,” Louis says, managing to lie perfectly still as Nick’s cleaning off his chest and his stomach. "Gonna keep you around to clean me up forever.”

"Life dream, that.”

Louis glances at him, and he can't be sure, but he thinks Nick’s smile’s got even wider.

"You know it is,” he says, plucking the flannel out of Nick’s hand and tossing it...somewhere. “Just like mine’s making sure you're never wearing too many clothes.”

Nick laughs and leans in closer.

"Especially my trousers.”

"Especially your trousers,” Louis agrees with a nod, reaching up and winding his fingers into Nick’s hair. "You're not wearing them now, are you?”

“I am,” Nick says. "But it was only so I could go get something to clean you off with, promise.”

"So you're going to be taking them back off now, yes?”

“Yes,” Nick says, ducking in and pressing a quick kiss to Louis's lips before sliding off the bed. There’s the sound of cloth hitting the floor, and then he's back, glancing down in surprise when Louis grabs at his hip.

"Had to make sure you weren't wearing pants,” Louis says, when he looks back up, and that startles a laugh out of him, but he comes along easily enough when Louis pulls him down and close.

"No pants either?” he asks, once he’s situated half on top of Louis. "I thought I at least got my pants.”

"Not around me, no,” Louis says, his eyes already starting to close again. "I’ve decided. No pants for you.”

Nick laughs, and it’s warm, as warm as he is. He rests his head on Louis’s collarbone, his arm across Louis’s stomach and his hand tucked under Louis’s hip. And it’s so nice and warm and _safe_ just being held like that, and by his Nicholas, that it isn't very long at all before Louis is falling back asleep, his fingers curled into Nick’s hair.

~*~

Louis finds himself back on the beach before sunrise the next morning, staring out at where the light grey of the sky meets the darker grey of the water from the Channel. It’s cold without the sun, and it’s not lost on him that his summer’s really and truly only hours away from being over.

 _Thank fuck for that_ , he thinks, seated beside the faint remnants of last night’s bonfire. He sets his mobile down by his hip and then leans back on his hands, digging his fingers into the sand and stretching his feet out in front of him, 

The water he decides, as he’s wiggling his toes around in a certain pair of stripey socks that’d been a last minute decision he’s now incredibly grateful he’d made, is probably even colder.

 _Good thing I'm not going in it_.

He’d thought about it, had headed to the beach with that very idea in mind even, but he’d only got his shoes off and pulled out his phone to send a text when he decided against it.

Too fucking cold, and there’s no sense in going in anyway.

Because whether or not his plan would have worked, he's not going to go through with it.

Ever, and he knows that now.

He can’t.

And it isn’t just because last night, _last night_ , went much better than he’d ever imagined it or because he thinks he’s somehow cured because he’s got Nick or because he’d found his books again or anything like that.

It’s because after he’d typed out his text and sent it, he found he’d had another text from his mum, wishing him a happy last weekend of his summer hols.

She’d also attached a picture she claimed she’d forgotten to send him earlier, and while Louis seriously doubts that, the picture itself had been enough to keep him out of the water.

It’d been of Nick and Daisy and Phoebe from earlier in the summer, the three of them on the ice at the Dome, and he hadn’t even realised she’d taken it, but the instant he’d seen it, he’d had to sit down.

Sit down and look at the three of them, but the twins in particular, and that’d been when it’d hit him.

 _I can’t leave_ them _._

_I have to see who they become._

It’s selfish, really, now that he’s thinking about it, staring out at the faint hint of blue that’s begun to separate the sky from the water. Sticking around just to see how other people turn out, imposing yourself on them, but it’s...what he has. 

What he can cling to.

More than any book or song or memory posted to his Instagram.

And he knows that he might not be the best brother or son or friend or boyfriend, and he knows that it’s probably going to get bad again. He _expects_ it to get bad again, especially when winter comes, but he just...can’t. He won’t, and if he can get through this wretched, for it is wretched, summer, he’s sure he can probably get through anything.

Even the winter and its terribly short days.

Even losing Nick, although he hopes that he doesn’t ever have to find that out for certain.

He flops back and looks at the sky, at the birds wheeling about and calling to each other overhead, and he’s still stretched out, his arms and legs flung wide, when a particular someone that he hopes he gets to hold onto for a very long time enters his field of vision.

“You were supposed to wait until sunrise,” Louis tells him.

“I didn’t want to.”

“Rebellious now, are we?”

Louis reaches out and pokes him in the shin, and Nick laughs.

Yes, Louis hopes he gets to see that for a very, very long time.

“I’m a loner, Dottie. A rebel.”

“You’re a dork,” Louis says, even though he’s laughing too. 

“You love me though.”

“Might do,” Louis says, patting the sand next to him. “Suppose you ought to join me seeing as how you’re here and all.”

“You do make a compelling argument.”

“Naturally.”

Nick shakes his head, his smile still in place as he’s lowering himself, a bit awkwardly, onto the ground by Louis's left hand. He sets Louis's shoes to the side and stretches out on his back, almost mirroring Louis, and once it looks like he's settled, Louis reaches over and grabs his wrist, tugging him closer. He lines them up so that they’re pressed together from shoulder to hip before hooking his leg over Nick’s and taking hold of his hand.

They watch the birds overhead for an age it seems like, and then Nick breaks the silence by asking, very quietly, “All right?”

His hand shakes ever so slightly in Louis’s, and it’s a bit damp. It goes straight to Louis’s heart, feeling that, and so he doesn't waste any time squeezing Nick’s hand and saying, almost in a whisper himself, “Yeah.”

"I really am,” he adds, turning his head from the sky to look at Nick. He squeezes Nick’s hand again until he's looking too, and then he asks, “Are you?”

Nick just nods, and it’s then that Louis knows what he has to do.

That one, final thing.

“I do need you to help me with something though,” he says. "I want to get rid of something, and I need you to help me do it.”

"Okay.”

He says it like it's something simple, and Louis knows it isn't, which is why he tells him, bluntly, “It’s a bottle of pills, Nicholas.”

Nick’s eyes go wide.

"Pills?”

“Yes pills,” Louis says, because if he isn't going through with his plan there’s no harm, he doesn’t think, in telling someone and Nick most of all, about it. "They were for sleeping, but I wasn't going to use them for that. Not exactly.”

Nick’s suddenly very pale.

"What were you going to use them for?”

“Doesn’t really matter,” Louis says, squeezing Nick’s hand again, hard, so maybe he’ll believe him. "Because I don't need them and I don’t want them in my room any more. And I thought...if you helped me get rid of them, it’d be...better. Somehow. I just...I want someone to know about them, and I want that person to see me get rid of them, and I thought it should be you since you're, well, you.”

"I didn’t know…” Nick says, stopping when Louis rolls over onto his side and brings a hand up to cup his cheek.

"You didn't,” he agrees, swiping his thumb across Nick’s cheekbone. "And I’m sorry I kept it secret. That was...not good. Of me. I'm sorry.”

"No it's just,” Nick says, his eyes still so wide, wide enough that Louis thinks he can see panic in them. "I didn’t know it was that _bad_. That you’d...want to do something like that.”

"It’s not so much wanting to as it's thinking there’s no other way around it.” Nick starts to say something, but Louis cuts him off by squeezing his cheek. “But it isn't like that for me anymore, I promise, and that’s why I'm getting rid of the pills. I don't even want to be _reminded_ of it, feeling like I did, and it's okay if you don't want to help, but I’d really like it...if you did.”

Nick stares at him for an endless minute, and Louis can feel his heart start to creep toward his feet, but then Nick’s face clears and he's reaching around to cup the back of Louis’s head, saying, with a smile, “Be glad to help. In any way I can.”

“Really?”

Nick laughs, a small but still lovely thing, and nods his head.

"Yes.”

"Oh thank god,” Louis says, and Nick’s laugh gets louder as Louis is pulling his head closer. "Thank you. You’re the best, seriously. Thank you so much.”

"It’s not anythi-” Nick starts to say, only to be cut off when Louis pulls him into a kiss, and it _is_ anything, so many things really, but Louis isn’t going to be breaking away to tell him that.

At least not yet.

Later, perhaps, when they’ve come up for air, the sun trying its best to burn through the fabric of Louis’s shirt and making him move, that's when he’ll tell him just how much it means, the things Nick does for him, how good he is to him and for him, and how very, very much he loves him.

Or maybe he'll just wait until they're back in his room, staring at an empty space in a drawer where a bottle of pills used to be, and it’ll sound more like “stay here and not at that big, silent flat of yours” than anything else.

Yes, Louis decides, as he’s winding his fingers into Nick’s hair, that's how he thinks he’d like it to go.

~*~

The pills get thrown away that same night.

Nick finishes moving his things in two weeks later. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A year and some change later and here we are. I just wanted to say a massive thank you for reading this odd little series, but especially to those of you who read it as a WIP and sent me such wonderful messages along the way. They’ve meant so much and you lot are the best, and really, thank you. :)
> 
> I'm also on [tumblr](http://akai-coat.tumblr.com/) if you want to talk about it over there. :)


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